By JOSEPH KELLARD
The Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co., which specializes in port-deepening projects, has been contracted to dredge some 300,000 cubic yards of sand from the inlet to Reynolds Channel and spread it on Rockaway beach over the course of 45 days. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded the Chicago-based company the $3 million project, and Great Lakes began work on Jan. 10.
The channel is just 12 feet deep in the East Rockaway Inlet, with some five and a half more feet of accumulated sand than after it was last dredged, before an earlier accident in 2004, according to a measurement taken by the Army Corps last spring.
The Corps said it had planned to dredge the channel in November, but the lowest bid for the project was $500,000 more than was in its budget, and it rescheduled the project for January. On Nov. 10, however, a 281-foot tanker, Kristin Poling the lone vessel that regularly uses the inlet to deliver oil to the Sprague Energy terminal in Oceanside ran aground there for the second time since December 2004.
We-re very happy that they started the dredging, said Steven Levy, a spokesman for Sprague. When you consider everything, they moved pretty quickly for the federal government, and we hope that they get done within six weeks or less.
The Army Corps- New York District received congressional approval to fund the project on Nov. 28. Earlier that day, Senator Charles Schumer, at a press conference at the Atlantic Beach Bridge, called for the immediate dredging of the inlet. With Levy and representatives of the U.S. Coast Guard, KeySpan and the Oil Heat Institute of Long Island at his side, Schumer warned of "skyrocketing" fuel prices on Long Island if the Army Corps delayed the dredging.
"We're glad the dredging has begun and thank the Army Corps of Engineers for acceding to our request quickly," Schumer stated in a recent press release. Dredging should ensure that home heating oil for Long Islanders will be available for the rest of the winter."
Fuel shipments through the inlet to Sprague in Oceanside account for between 10 and 20 percent of the heating oil sold daily in south and central Nassau County, with 60 local companies annually distributing roughly 40 million gallons of oil to some 50,000 homes and facilities including schools, the Long Island Rail Road, emergency response units and municipalities such as the Town of Hempstead, according to Sprague.
The barge company, New Jersey-based Poling & Cutler Marine Transportation, said that even after the crippled tanker was repaired, company officials were likely to suspend shipments to Sprague-s terminal until the inlet is properly dredged, according to Operations Manager Rick Carment.
Levy said that since the accident, there have been many fewer deliveries to Sprague than normal, and that the oil company had tried different ways to get the deliveries through the channel, including a tugboat barge. This was very challenging, and what we-re doing while the dredging project continues is trying various methods to bring product in there, he said. Obviously, it-s carrying a lot less product than we-d normally bring. But thank goodness it-s been warm. But it-s supposed to get cold this week, so we-ll have to see what happens.
At his November press conference, Schumer also called for a plan that would require the Army Corps to dredge the channel every year rather than on a two-year cycle.
Most importantly, Levy said, hopefully we will be able to make this dredging at least an annual event.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
