Posted on December 20, 2018
PA Landers Inc. has secured a $49,000 contract to load and transport dredged sediment from Shore Road in Pocasset, to eroding Town Neck Beach.
Sandwich needs the sand, which was dredged from the Barlows Landing channel last year and dewatered in a Shore Road basin next to the Pocasset River. Work was set to start Monday.
The sediment has been tested for pathogens and is determined to be clean and suitable for beach renourishment, according to the Bourne Department of Natural Resources.
Bourne officials did not want to spend the money necessary to haul the material away, given that the sediment could not be trucked to the municipal landfill, a certified dredge-disposal site.
So the hauling of up to 5,000 cubic yards of sediment is beneficial to both communities. Staff with Bourne DNR asked Sandwich officials if they were interested in the sediment free of charge. Sandwich officials said the material could be used on the western stretch of storm-tossed beach.
“This is great news for us,” Bourne Shore and Harbor Committee Chairman Rich Libin said December 13. “Spares us an expense, and there has been concern about the material staying in place. Good to see it go.”
Sandwich officials, meanwhile, acknowledge the point that 5,000 cubic yards placed on Town Neck Beach is not going to materially affect erosion likely to occur during upcoming storms. But they also say the Bourne sand, though it is a stop-gap measure at best, is better than nothing as winter approaches.
The Woods Hole Group, the town’s shoreline consultant, estimates it will take 400,000 cubic yards of material to restore the beach at Cape Cod Bay.
Sandwich Town Manager Bud Dunham said the Woods Hole Group is working with the Natural Resources Department on sediment placement.
The sediment transfer comes as town officials await an early 2019 state decision that would allow dredging of 220,000 cubic yards of littoral sand from the Scusset State Beach Basin north of the canal jetties for deposit at Town Neck Beach. Some $4 million approved in a state environmental bond bill would be needed to fund the Scusset-basin project.
Selectmen last week sent a letter to the town’s Capitol Hill delegation, state legislators, and state environmental officials, as well as Governor Charlie Baker’s office, delineating what the town faces along the shoreline and what it has undertaken in recent years to fight erosion.
Source: Sandwich Wicked Local
