More than 30 percent of the Assawoman canal should be dredged before officials have to halt the project at the end of this month until September of 2007, a Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control official said last week.
Coastal Point • FILE PHOTO:
Dredging work on the Assawoman Canal will soon wrap up until next September.
Regulations disallow dredging from Jan. 1 to the end of August to minimize wildlife impacts. Officials began dredging the man-made canal in October after 16 years of delay caused by strife between environmentalists and state officials about the impact of the dredging project.
“We’re making pretty good progress,” said Chuck Williams, DNREC’s dredging project manager. “We’ll have everything in place to really make a dent next year.”
That progress this year has come despite delays in initiating the hydraulic portion of the dredging. A machine that rides in the water, scoops sediment and sends it via pipeline to the storage area on DNREC property near Jefferson Creek is used for what officials call hydraulic dredging.
The canal segment from south of Route 26 to the Assawoman Bay is expected to be dredged hydraulically but problems installing the pipeline caused a six-week delay and no work is expected to be done hydraulically this year.
For what Williams called mechanical dredging, officials use a 60-foot boom excavator reaching down from either side of the canal’s banks to scoop sediment. That sediment is then placed in dump trucks and trucked to a containment area at Fresh Pond State Park. North of the Route 26 bridge to White Creek is being dredged mechanically and about 50 percent of that portion of the project should be completed by year’s end, Williams said.
Officials are dredging the canal to a 3-foot depth at low tide. Williams said he expects to complete the project in two to three years. The north side of the canal should be finished next year “without a problem,” he said.
“The goal basically is to improve navigation for small recreational watercraft,” Williams said.
The Sierra Club, an environmental organization that is active locally, has appealed to halt the project — most recently on Dec. 6 to the Delaware Supreme Court in Dover. Kenneth Kristl, the Sierra Club’s attorney, argued on Dec. 6 that when Delaware’s legislature made an 11th-hour addition to the 2006-fiscal-year bond bill funding the project and allowing for its go-ahead, it violated the separation-of-powers doctrine, the guiding principle for U.S. government. A decision is not expected in the case for a couple of months.
The Environmental Appeals Board had already made it known that it would remand the dredging permit to DNREC for another cost-benefit analysis before the bond bill was passed, Kristl argued. An official decision remanding the permit was not filed until late July 2005, almost one month after the bond bill was approved. Robert Phillips, the state’s attorney argued on Dec. 6 that the legislature had the right to issue funding because an official decision was not yet rendered.
While the alleged separation-of-powers violation is still in play, that EAB order itself — which did not question environmental impacts of the dredging itself, the Sierra Club’s main contention for years — does not seem to be of significant impact. In his June, 2006 decision to deny the Sierra Club’s appeal to halt the project in Delaware Chancery Court, Chancellor William B. Chandler even questioned the value of the EAB decision.
“The EAB order made it clear that the result of DNREC’s amended cost-benefit analysis had no bearing whatsoever on the environmental effects of the dredging. Moreover, the EAB order acknowledged that the required cost-benefit analysis would not itself influence whether the dredging would proceed. The decision to go forward with the dredging project, the EAB correctly observed, remained with the Legislature,” Chandler’s June decision reads. That same logic was presented by the court on Dec. 6.
Environmental impacts — which could still be studied through another cost-benefit analysis because of possible erosion caused if boats do not follow “no wake” laws — have been at the center of the Sierra Club’s contentions for years. Steve Callanen is an Ocean View resident and active Sierra Club member.
“It’s going to destroy wildlife, dredging the canal,” Callanen said. “(The dredging project) is motivated by the property owners that feel they can increase their value of their property by getting the canal dredged.”
Boats navigating the canal — especially at high speeds — will disrupt spawning in the canal and the general welfare of the wildlife there, Kristl and Callenen have argued. Rep. Gerald Hocker (R-38th), a major proponent of the project for years along with Sen. George Bunting (D-20th), has consistently disagreed with the environmental organization’s claims.
“It’s something that is needed to be done,” Hocker said of the project. “(The canal) is so shallow fish can’t even spawn in the canal. At one time, the Little Assawoman Bay had fish, had clams. Those days are over. There is nothing there. It all needs to be maintained. We got to increase the flow, and this will help it.”
It was not immediately clear whether scientific evidence defends Hocker’s claims, or those of the Sierra Club.