Posted on August 11, 2020
Having received requests to dredge Waquoit Bay, Rand’s Canal and Megansett Harbor, the Falmouth Waterways Committee will hold a special meeting to evaluate and prioritize future dredging projects.
At its meeting on Wednesday, August 5, committee member Kevin King presented a draft document showing 12 waterways in town considered for dredging. On this draft document, Eel Pond and Waquoit Bay are listed as critical; West Falmouth Harbor, Megansett Harbor, Bournes Pond, Great Pond and Green Pond are listed as areas of concern; and Wild Harbor, Little Pond, Falmouth Harbor and Great Harbor in Woods Hole are listed as good. Rand’s Canal is also featured on the draft document, classified as needing further review before categorization.
Harbormaster Gregg Fraser said the list is incomplete, as the town also dredges several waterways for water quality purposes, rather than navigation purposes. This includes Little Pond, Trunk River and Salt Pond.
“I would think all the places we dredge and could potentially dredge should eventually make that list,” Mr. Fraser said.
This includes Childs River and the interior of Falmouth Harbor near the Island Queen, he said.
“It is a federal channel, but they won’t dredge it because it is such a small project, and they’ve eliminated a lot of the smaller projects,” Mr. Fraser said. “They come in every year, they do their surveys, which come back to us. We got a very nice survey from the federal government saying there is supposed to be a nine-feet controlled depth for Falmouth Inner Harbor, but there are a lot of places that aren’t nine feet. They won’t move forward with actually dredging it because it is considered a very low priority for them.”
Mr. Fraser said the town dredges Falmouth Inner Harbor inlet, allowing the Island Queen to get in and out of the harbor.
Committee member J. Michael Kinney said waterways on the dredging list typically fall into one of two categories: those where routine maintenance dredging is required and areas where dredging has been requested by residents and boaters. The latter areas are not dredged as often. The two categories should be considered separately, he said.
“We should figure out what our expenditures are, on the average, for those we do every year or at least every other year,” Mr. Kinney said. “Building upon that, we should then make some priorities for the other project, whether it be the Waquoit project, Megansett or some of the others.”
Knowing the town needs to dredge areas of Falmouth Harbor, Green Pond, Great Harbor and Eel River almost annually, he said the committee should prioritize the remaining areas.
“There doesn’t seem to be any real controversy about the fact that people have to get into Falmouth Harbor or Great or Green pond or Eel River,” Mr. Kinney said. “That eliminates at least four, and then we can take and look at the priority of the other five or six that are there.”
The committee will do so at a special meeting, currently scheduled for Wednesday, August 19, via Zoom.
“It doesn’t take me any time to get you a list of everything we’ve dredged,” Mr. Fraser said. “I actually have a spreadsheet I thought I had sent already, that has several years of dredge material, what we took out and where it went, so you’ll have a really good idea of what we’ve done over the last years. Then, as Mike suggests, we come up with a wish list of the ones we haven’t addressed yet. They’re the ones we really do need to have some kind of prioritization of which ones you want to move forward with, because you can’t do them all.”
He provided the committee with updates on both the recent Green Pond and Great Pond dredging projects.
“Both of those were done this spring, Green Pond up to the embayment line,” Mr. Fraser said. “Great Pond was done last. I just got the post dredge surveys, so we’ll be paying the bill to the county. There were no problems with either of those projects.”
He also discussed the town’s 10-year comprehensive dredging permit, set to expire in February 2022. For the fall Town Meeting, he has requested $50,000 to hire an engineering firm to start the process and file local, state and federal applications to review that permit.
“I expect that will be included in the capital,” he said. “It is not one of the ones that usually faces much scrutiny. Dredging and/or permitting for dredging is usually successful at Town Meeting.”
One request that will not be included in the fall is engineering for the proposed Waquoit Bay dredging project. It is, however, included in the town’s 10-year capital plan.
“The committee is going to put this, and several other projects, into the capital budget, but it is not in for this or next year,” Mr. Fraser said.
If the Waquoit Bay project is a priority for the waterways committee, he said the group will have to identify a funding source for it. Typically, larger-scale projects such as this fall outside the scope of the annual request at Town Meeting.
“The committee has to come up with their priority list, where they want those limited resources to be spent and in what order,” Mr. Fraser said.
Though a separate project, he said Mashpee is moving forward with a plan to dredge its portion of Waquoit Bay. It is in the engineering phase.
“They are very much aware of what we are talking about doing in Falmouth, and this would complete the actual connection, coming past the Mashpee line, through the Falmouth turn and to the section we are talking about,” Mr. Fraser said.
Source: capenews
