Posted on June 6, 2017
By Deborah McDermott, Seacoastonline.com
After five years, a lot of worry by the town’s Harbor Board and continuing work of the Maine Congressional delegation, word came this week that $2.5 million is in President Donald Trump’s budget to dredge York Harbor.
The appropriation still has to be approved by Congress, so “it’s not 110 percent sure yet. But it’s 99 percent sure,” said Harbor Board chairman David Webber. “So we feel very pleased and cautiously optimistic.”
If all goes well, bids will go out in July and the contract will be awarded Oct. 1 so the dredge can begin Nov. 1, said Jack Karalius, project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In addition to York Harbor, funding is also included in the president’s budget for dredges of the Saco River and Wells Harbor. In all, more than $7 million was appropriated for the projects.
It has been 21 years since York Harbor has been dredged – a scooping out of silt that comes from further upriver and builds up gradually in the harbor. Since the last dredge in 1996, more than 42,000 cubic yards of sand, silt and clay have accumulated. Before the first dredge in the 1950s by the Army Corps of Engineers, there was no harbor but just a channel, said former Harbormaster Dave Hutchinson. The harbor has had to be dredged roughly every 20 years since.
Portions of the north and south basins are currently exposed sandbars at low tide. It’s estimated about 30 percent of all the harbor moorings are affected by the silting.
The Harbor Board began the permitting process for a dredge in 2012, and has had all the necessary state and federal permits in hand since 2015. The problem has been limited funding for dredging small ports and harbors in past budgets – with the lion’s share going to major ports.
Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and Rep. Chellie Pingree have sent several letters to federal officials seeking funding for the dredge, most recently in May. In a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget and to secretary of the Army official in charge of the Army Corps, they urged inclusion of $49 million “for small, remote or subsistence navigation” programs that included the York Harbor dredge funds.
“We’re very pleased to see that the Army Corps of Engineers has included more than $7 million for the much-needed dredging of York Harbor, Saco River, and Wells Harbor in its budget proposal,” said Sens. Collins and King and Rep. Pingree in a joint statement Friday. “We will continue working together in the months ahead to ensure that both the House and Senate appropriate the requested funding so we can get these shovel-ready projects finished and keep these ports and waterways operating for the fishermen and other users who depend on them.”
According to Karalius, the Army Corps can put out the bids and even open them, but will not be able to award the contract until the money is in hand. Still, he said, “it’s looking very good” for a November dredge start date.
In the meantime, the town has to go out to bid for a contractor to remove all the moorings in the harbor prior to the start of work and to put them all back in when work is completed. Webber said the Harbor Board is currently putting together a bid package, and will be coming before the Board of Selectmen in the near future to discuss the matter.
Source: SeaCoastOnline
