Regular Maintenance Dredging Seen as Need at Southport Harbor's Channel

A new report says 1,200 to 1,500 cubic yards of sand moves into Southport Harbor's federal navigation channel every year, and James Bradley, a member of the town's Harbor Management Commission, said Tuesday that maintenance dredging of the channel every five or six years may be the only option to keep the channel open.

"We just have a maintenance dredging problem, and every five to six years, we have to clean it up," Bradley said at Tuesday afternoon's commission meeting in Sullivan-Independence Hall. "The frequency of having to do this tightens up considerably because we can't take the shoal out."

The state Department of Environmental Protection won't let the town remove the shoal - also called a sandbar and sand spit - that juts into the channel from the Country Club of Fairfield's beach because endangered plants grow on the shoal and piping plovers, an endangered bird, also have been spotted there.

The channel is authorized by the U.S. Congress to have a 100-foot width, but the DEP in 2005 allowed dredging only to a 75-foot width due to the "beach panic grass" (the piping plover had yet to be spotted in 2005.)

John Roberge, an engineer and the commission's dredging consultant, said the latest hydrographic survey shows 1,200 to 1,500 cubic yards of sand accumulated on the sandbar in the past year, which he said was consistent with a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' pre-dredging survey in 2003 and the commission's earlier survey in 2007.

"We're now encroaching on the 75-foot width the DEP allowed us to dredge to. We're now seeing that channel become narrower," Roberge said to the Harbor Management Commission. "I think the significant conclusion was this deposition rate on the shoal and raising the flag that we've got to start thinking about dredging."

"You're going to be down to 50 feet before you know it," Roberge said.

Geoffrey Steadman, a consultant with the commission, said it was important to tell the DEP that the sand was causing the channel's 75-foot width to narrow again. "That's the key thing to stress to the DEP...Five years after it was dredged, it's filling up again," he said.

"They said to pursue a solution, you need to demonstrate an ongoing problem. We've demonstrated what they asked us to do," Steadman said.

Roberge said, "We've gotten a real comfort level based on this survey. We're seeing a real consistent deposition rate. I think now we can focus on management of 1,200 to 1,500 cubic yards of sand annually."

Where to put the sand that gets dredged out of the channel was a source of brief debate, though depositing it far off-shore, instead of using it to replenish the Country Club's beach, seemed to be the solution favored by most at Tuesday's meeting.

Roberge said the DEP would be "very supportive" of using the dredged sand to replenish the Country Club's beach, but Ed Crowley, chairman of the town's Shellfish Commission, said, "If you put it in deeper water out in the Sound somewhere, it's not going to come back."

Mary VonConta, the commission's chairman, said the next step would be to notify the DEP, Army Corps of Engineers and state dredging coordinator about the findings, but Bradley suggested including an application to dredge as well.

"What about the practical sense of applying for a permit to move the sand and force the issue?" Bradley asked. "In a regulatory environment, unless you throw the permit application on the desk, nothing happens."

"The piping plovers can stay there. They can watch it," Bradley said.

Bradley said the town has to face the fact that if it wants to keep Southport Harbor's federal navigation channel open, regular dredging will have to take place.

After the meeting, Roberge said about 7,000 cubic yards of sand would have to be dredged and that the cost to do that would range from $18 to $27 a cubic yard, which works out to $126,000 to $189,000.

"Typically the town, if there were some way to get federal participation, the town would still have to pay the majority of it," Roberge said.

VonConta said the commission would send a letter to the DEP, Army Corps of Engineers and state dredging coordinator about "data we've accumulated and where we would like to move."