Corps To Dredge Stage Harbor Channel

by Tim Wood

            CHATHAM --- Later this spring, the Army Corps of Engineers will dredge the Stage Harbor entrance channel for the first time in eight years.

            The Corps’ New England District has received authorization to reprogram funds left over from other projects so that the dredge Currituck can clear shoals from the channel while it is in town for its annual maintenance work in Aunt Lydia’s Cove.

            “It’s very good news,” said Coastal Resources Director Ted Keon, who has been working various angles to get the Corps to dredge the federally maintained channel, which it hasn’t done since 2000.

            It’s certainly good news for the more than 150 recreational boaters and commercial fishermen based in Stage Harbor, many of whom have had to play the tides for a year or more because of excessive shoaling in the channel.  The 150-foot-wide channel is supposed to be 10 feet deep at low water, but is now only about three feet in most areas, according to Harbormaster Stuart Smith. 

            Betty Magnusson, vice commodore of the Monomoy Yacht Club, could only get her sailboat out of the harbor from mid to high tide last summer.  “This year it would be high tide only” unless dredging is done, she said.  Her boat draws six feet, and many commercial fishing boats in the harbor draw four or five feet, she added.

            “It’s much needed and we’re looking forward to it happening,” she said of the dredging.

            The 150-foot Currituck will be in Aunt Lydia’s Cove for annual federally funded maintenance dredging in early June.  Corps Project Manager Bill Kavanaugh said the current plan calls for the Currituck to dredge Stage Harbor first, when it arrives in town in mid June.  The dredge was scheduled to arrive in early June, but may have to do some emergency dredging in Shark River, N.J.

            The New England District had to get permission to reprogram the money from the North Atlantic Division and the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., Kavanaugh said.  In the past, surplus funds were regularly reprogrammed to other projects where permits existed, he explained, but that reprogramming authority was taken away by the Bush Administration and Congress.

            The $150,000 in reprogrammed funding will allow the Currituck to spend up to 10 days in Stage Harbor.  It costs approximately $10,000 a day to operate the vessel.  He expects the dredge to be in Chatham a total of 15 to 20 days.

            The dredge could spend longer in Chatham if a memorandum of agreement between the Corps and the town, allowing Chatham to pay for dredging, is approved.  Had the reprogramming funds not come through, town officials offered to pay the entire cost of dredging in the Stage Harbor channel, using a $300,000 state Seaport Bond grant from the state, which the town is also using to update permits for the dredging project.  Keon said if the arrangement is approved, the town will contribute as much as necessary above the $150,000 to ensure that the channel is dredged properly.

            “There is a lot of shoaling,” Keon said.

            Kavanaugh said in order to accept the local contribution, approval is needed from the Office of Management and Budget.

            Keon credited Delahunt’s office with facilitating approval of the reprogramming.  “The fact that the dredge was already slated to come to Chatham was already in our favor,” he added.

            Federal funding for small-harbor dredging has been scarce under the Bush Administration, Delahunt’s Chief of Staff, Mark Forest, said in an e-mail.  Reprogramming earmarked funds typically requires consent from the Congressman who sought the money and the appropriations committee. In this case, the request was unusual because Chatham has two federally authorized Corps projects, Aunt Lydia’s Cove and Stage Harbor, he wrote.

            “Congressman Delahunt is very pleased with the arrangement worked out between the Corps and the town and signed off on it,” Forest wrote.

            Saquatucket Harbor is also badly in need of dredging, and hasn’t seen the Currituck in many years, said Harwich Harbormaster Thomas Leach.

            “If I could just get the Currituck here for one day, they could straighten out the 2,000-yard bump I have in the channel,” he said. After being told the dredge will be in Stage Harbor next month, he said he planned to contact Delahunt’s office for help in getting to Corps to stop in Saquatucket, which is also a federally maintained channel.

            “My next call will be to Mark Forest,” he said Monday.

            In his e-mail, Forest said Delahunt’s office is continuing to work with Harwich on funding for dredging of Saquatucket.  “We have sought funds and will know more in a month or two,” he wrote.

            Smith said two weeks should be enough for the Currituck to clear up the worst of the shoaling.  The dredge may not have to spend as long as it usually does in Aunt Lydia’s Cove, he added, because there is less shoaling than usual in the municipal fish pier entrance channel.

            “The worst of the two harbors is Stage Harbor at the moment,” he said, adding that there were commercial fishing boats that did not work out of the harbor last year because of the conditions, and recreational boater considering not putting their boats in the water because of the shoaling.

            Kavanaugh said a survey done last year estimated that 30,000 yards of sand needs to be removed from the channel.  “We went through a winter and it could have gotten worse,” he added.  The Currituck can remove 3,000 to 4,000 yards of sand a day in a location like the Stage Harbor channel, where the disposal area is nearby.

5/8/08