PLUM ISLAND — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will award a contract Tuesday that will allow the long-awaited dredging of the Merrimack River channel and replenishment of beaches on Plum Island and Salisbury to begin as early as October.
As the proposed project nears reality, a multi-agency committee called the Merrimack River Beach Alliance is already thinking about what to do if the dredging yields more sand than expected.
Army Corps chief planner Mark Habel told the Beach Alliance yesterday that the agency has been working with an estimate of 160,000 cubic yards of sand, but if the channel is dredged to its full depth of 17 feet, that total could rise to perhaps 165,000 yards.
Habel said the extra sand would simply be left on the beach at the project's final discharge location, and the Army Corps would consider its project completed. A state or local entity would then be free to redistribute or stockpile the sand.
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. of Oak Brook, Ill., will be awarded the Army Corps contract after it submitted the apparent low bid for the work on May 20, $5.518 million. Great Lakes, the largest provider of dredging services in the country, according to its Web site, beat out two other bidders that quoted prices of $7.5 million and $10.7 million respectively.
Habel said the company expects to start work in early October and, if all goes smoothly, to take about two months to complete the job.
The head of the state Office of Coastal Zone Management, Deerin Babb-Brott, told alliance members meeting at Plum Island Taxpayers and Associates Hall yesterday that they should begin the application process immediately to gain the permits that would be needed to redeploy the excess sand to other beach locations.
Babb-Brott said legally mandated review and appeal periods would take until Oct. 1 even if the permit process were to begin then and there.
"Don't wait until the dredge shows up," he said.
State Sen. Bruce Tarr, Beach Alliance co-chairman, immediately set up a meeting for Monday afternoon for the conservation agents in Salisbury, Newburyport and Newbury; Babb-Brott; Department of Environmental Protection deputy regional director Eric Worrall; and consulting engineer David Vine of Vine Associates-GZA of Newburyport.
Tarr, a Gloucester Republican whose state Senate district includes Newbury, said the group should develop likely scenarios for deployment of the additional sand and begin preparing permit applications.
Planning has been under way for more than a year and a half, after accelerating beach erosion near Plum Island Center undermined one house and put half a dozen others in jeopardy.
The project calls for dredging the Merrimack River channel to a depth of 17 feet and depositing the dredged sand directly onto the beach at Plum Island and in Salisbury.
Habel said the first 40,000 yards of sand will be deposited on Salisbury Beach. The remainder will be pumped onto about 2,500 feet of Plum Island shoreline. The sand is expected to create 20 additional feet of dune along that stretch and an additional 50-foot width of beach.
The last time the channel was dredged, in 1999, the operation yielded 145,000 yards of sand, according to the Army Corps project website.
Sand from dredging operations is normally dumped near the shore, which is far cheaper than onshore deposit.
The additional project expense has been justified as cost-effective by an Army Corps report in January 2009 that indicated as many as 26 homes could be lost to erosion over the next 10 years if nothing were done.
The federal government is picking up the bulk of the tab for the project. The state Department of Conservation and Recreation is contributing, and the towns of Newbury and Salisbury also share some of the expense.
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