Mayor Jay Gillian’s administration sent out an update Tuesday on its efforts to find a spoils site that would allow the continued dredging of bayside lagoons and channels.
Much of the bay area on the west side of Ocean City is unnavigable to boat traffic at low tide, and even at mid-tides, channels in and out of the lagoon communities are narrow and unmarked.
The city has committed funding to dredging projects in its capital plans, but projects have been held up by the lack of permitted sites to dump the dredged material. The city has been working with state and federal environmental regulators to find a solution.
This much is clear: There won’t be any work done this fall (no contracts are out to bid) or next spring (the state Department of Environmental permitting window does not open until July 1, 2015).
The city is aiming to come up with a plan by then. The two seeming best options: 1) To use a small spoils site under the Ninth Street Bridge (that would require the costly trucking of material to increase capacity), and 2) To experiment with a new technique to “create and stabilize wetlands” — essentially to spread a thin layer of dredged material over a wide area of the marshes (the city has a $2.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior to try it, if specific plans can be approved).
The update is as follows:
