Posted on February 9, 2021
The dredging of Waquoit Bay is at least two years away.
“If everything happens correctly and everything falls into place, we actually get to do some dredging in December of 2022,” Sanders Davies of the Waquoit Bay Yacht Club told the Falmouth Waterways Committee on Wednesday, February 3.
Due to the lengthy permitting, funding and RFP process, as well as time-of-year restrictions, Mr. Davies said fall 2023 is a more realistic start date. However, he acknowledged the schedule “makes all sorts of assumptions about what we’re going to be able to do.”
Before the town can dredge bay and entrance channels, Harbormaster Gregg Fraser said, the town needs to find a location to place the dredge spoils.
“We need to work that out prior to moving forward with permitting,” Mr. Fraser said. “We can’t get a permit without telling the permit agency where the spoils are going.”
He has identified a privately owned upland disposal site in Barnstable. The town would need permission from the owner, as well as approval from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, to use the site.
In addition to Waquoit Bay and entrance channels, the Seconsett entrance channel could be part of this dredging project, which would require working with Mashpee. Mr. Davies said partnering with Mashpee to dredge Waquoit Bay makes the project eligible for MassWorks grants funding.
“I think we can make a very good case if both towns move forward with it,” Mr. Fraser said. “MassWorks is really an economic driver for dredging, but I certainly think we can make a case with the amount of boats, property and boatyards served by Waquoit Bay, that it would qualify under that grant.”
If approved, the MassWorks grant would cover 50 percent of the dredging cost.
“If we’re talking about dredging by commercial dredging, the cost is going to be significantly higher than we would be paying through the county, so that funding could be very important in moving this along,” Mr. Fraser said.
Falmouth’s capital budget could also be a source of funding. While the town has a 10-year capital plan, Mr. Fraser noted these plans can change.
“This project competes against every other waterways project and every other capital request within the capital budget,” he said. “It was good point taken: if everything falls into place, this timeline works. Sometimes, things don’t fall into place, which means sometimes projects get moved to different fiscal years based on funding and based on what is available for free cash. There are a lot of things, beyond the controls of the waterways committee, that we deal with as we move through the process.”
Given all the factors that could potentially delay the dredging of Waquoit Bay, committee member Michael Kinney said the committee could not say with certainty when dredging would begin.
“Having gone through a number of these projects, I would hate to have it go on the record that we would be dredging in 2024,” Mr. Kinney said. “I think that is an optimistic approach to it, but given what is going on in the town now financially, the redoing of the comprehensive permit and all of the other budget restrictions, this isn’t the only thing we’re working on, but it was certainly helpful to see that process and how it does take months and months and years.”
