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Chester Creek Dredging Scheduled for January

The dredging of Chester Creek is scheduled for January 2022, which will alleviate many of the issues boaters have faced trying to navigate this waterway.

“Because of it being a tidal river and a tidal creek, Mother Nature deposits the soil [and] debris and it comes right into the channel and up the creek,” said Carolyn Kane, chair of the Chester Harbor Management Commission in a phone interview. “What happens is just the elevation of the base of the creek itself gets higher and higher and higher.”

Though the creek is typically dredged every 10 years, the permitting process to have the creek dredged in spring 2021 was delayed, in part, to accommodate spawning fish and the town’s anticipated receipt of state grant funds for the project, according to minutes from an April 14 Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting.

It has now been 11 years since the creek was last dredged, and for the last two years, many of the larger boats and sailboats have been getting stuck.

“This year wasn’t quite as bad,” said Kane. “Last year was terrible because we had such extreme low tide because we didn’t have the rains, so the water was very shallow, and the boats were getting stuck in the creek.”

A boat would come to a sudden stop, she said, and specialized boats, similar to tow boats, would need “to get in there and pull them out.”

The town is now set to contract with Hays Haven Marina, which is based in Chester, to complete the dredging for $70,000. This contract was approved at a Dec. 1 BOS meeting.

Of Hays Haven Marina, “they are local,” First Selectwoman Lauren Gister said at the Dec. 1 meeting. “We know that they are a responsible contractor. They have been discussing this. They’re very, very familiar with the project. There is no doubt in my mind that they are not only qualified, but also the low bidder.”

The cost of the dredging is being paid for by a Small Harbor Improvement Projects Program grant administered by the Connecticut Port Authority, with a portion being matched by the Town of Chester. This grant was allocated by the State Bond Commission in mid-April.

Kane said that the dredging of the creek shouldn’t take more than a week, but it depends on weather conditions.

“If the weather cooperates, it’s going to go much faster,” she said.

The amount of sediment that will be removed from the creek has “been estimated as roughly about 2,000 square yards of material,” said Kane. “And to give some perspective of what it’s going to look like, they’re going to dredge to a depth of no more than six feet mean low water tide over 13,500 square feet.”

The dredged material will be deposited on the Rooke Property, which is next to the creek, on the opposite side of the marina.

Kane said that the required testing and studies have been done for the dredged materials by the various governing agencies such as the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection to help ensure there is no negative environmental impact.

The dredging of the creek will need to happen again in 10 years, she said.

“So, this is a process that needs to be done every 10 years because they projected that over a 10-year span, it will increase the sediment and reduce the amount of navigable water over the 10 years,” said Kane.

“We got stymied with COVID and the fact that the bond commission didn’t act on the grant,” Gister said of the delay. “So, it got very confusing last year. But hopefully we’ll be able to get this done and then by the next boating season, we will be past the issues that have arisen in Chester Creek.”