SANDWICH – Work crews finished placing dredged material from the Cape Cod Canal onto Town Neck Beach in Sandwich last week.
Mark Galkowski, the director of natural resources for the town of Sandwich, says the placement and grading of about 120,000 cubic yards of sand was finished by Wednesday.
Galkowski did not seem worried about the winter storm that struck over the weekend.
“Hydraulically placed sand is far better than any type of dry material that is excavated out of a pit and placed,” he said. “The hydraulic placement allows the sand to bind.”
Galkowski said the amount of sand dredged from the canal was a little less than the town anticipated.
“It’s not an exact science and the canal is a very dynamic area so material does move around,” he said.
Galkowski is hopeful the material will help the beach to hang on for a few more years.
“There’s 120,000 to 130,000 yards that weren’t there in November,” he said. “It’s put material back into the coastal system and that will certainly move around in that system.”
He said the town may make some changes to the profile before beach grass is put in.
The town is in the process of permitting a borrow site off of Scusset Beach for an additional 300,000 cubic yards of material.
“That’s where we look to gain the remaining yardage that we need,” he said.
Borrow sites are more common in Mid-Atlantic and South including Florida.
“In this part of the country it hasn’t been permitted and we are looking to permit the first one,” Galkowski said.
The sand that would be taken is sand that would normally be moving through the coastal process and is trapped on the other side of the jetty at the canal.
Town meeting voters approved an additional $600,000 in Community Preservation Funds towards the project late last year after bids for the work came in higher than expected. Previous funds of $1.2 million were approved in September.
By BRIAN MERCHANT, CapeCod.com NewsCenter
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