City Council on Thursday approved a shared services agreement with the City of Wildwood to use material dredged from shallow Ocean City lagoons and channels to cap a Wildwood landfill.
The agreement would help both towns. Ocean City has committed funding to deepening bayfront lagoons and channels that are too shallow for boat traffic at low tide, but it has no place to put the dredged material. Wildwood needs material to cap its Back Bay Landfill to allow for future redevelopment.
The agreement calls for removing material from a dredge spoils site near the 34th Street causeway in Ocean City. The site is at capacity with 300,000 cubic yards of material forming a low, flat mound on the bayside marshes. Up to 250,000 cubic yards could be removed without compromising the structure of the site. That would allow Ocean City to use the site again for future dredging projects.
Councilman Antwan McClellan called the agreement “one of many avenues” the city is exploring as it looks to provide relief to boaters and waterfront property owners who have long been frustrated by the lack of navigable water on Ocean City’s bay side.
The avenue would be both circuitous and costly. Ocean City likely would have to construct a roadway to give trucks access to the spoils site, pay to have trucks transport the spoils, and pay Wildwood $14 per cubic yard to accept the material.
Ocean City Business Administrator Mike Dattilo said Thursday that the $14 per cubic yard fee would be far less than the cost of transporting the material to any other remote site.
The agreement suggests that all necessary permits have been obtained or are expected to be obtained.
Council approved only the shared services agreement. The concept is still at a preliminary stage. It did not consider any appropriations to begin work or any requests for bids.
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