Dredging

Gordon and Rita Snyder remember swimming and crabbing in pristine Anne Arundel County waters, but the aquatic playground of their youth is nowhere to be found in Gray's Creek, where the Snyders have a waterfront home. Over the years, the once-sandy bottom of the Pasadena waterway off the Magothy River has been covered by at least a foot of silt, making it difficult for the Snyders and their neighbors to navigate boats, take a swim or dig their toes in the sludge-covered sand. They're among 28 property owners on Gray's Creek seeking dredging permits from the Army Corps of Engineers to clear and deepen the channel.

WHETHER IT BE ON land or on sea, finding waste-disposal sites is never easy. That's the case for the Port of Baltimore, which needs major dredging work along its 126 miles of shipping channels -- but lacks sites to dump the spoil.For the past two years, routine maintenance dredging has been deferred because of this problem. Unless new sites are picked, Baltimore may start losing maritime business as steamship lines desert the port because its channels are too shallow and too narrow.Port business is especially competitive right now. Companies are sharing vessels to maximize their efficiency and cutting down on the number of port calls.

JUST WHEN THINGS were looking rosy for the Port of Baltimore, a new set of ominous storm clouds can be seen on the horizon. Disputes over channel dredging and dramatic changes in the shipping industry foreshadow serious troubles.There's no question Baltimore will suffer unless the legislature approves a dredging program. But a late switch by Gov. Parris Glendening against a departmental plan for limited disposal in the "deep trough" of the Chesapeake Bay created confusion. Lawmakers are wondering if the governor is trying to curry favor with environmental groups at the port's expense.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, worried about the loss of underwater grasses critical to the health of the Chesapeake Bay, is trying to squelch dredging projects in Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties. Officials in both counties and the Army Corps of Engineers say the projects in creeks off the Middle and Magothy rivers were designed to study the effects of dredging on underwater grass beds. But EPA officials say that the proposal isn't much of a study and that it could destroy grass beds that are only beginning to recover from previous destruction.

The Ehrlich administration said yesterday that it is shelving a proposal to expand motorized dredging for oysters in the Chesapeake Bay because of widespread opposition from the public and scientists. Watermen had pushed for the expansion, which would have expanded the portion of the bay open to "power dredging" from about 30 percent of the estuary to about 40 percent. But environmentalists and scientists sharply criticized the idea, saying that more power dredging would only accelerate the destruction of the bay's oyster population, which has plummeted because of disease, pollution and overfishing.

ALBANY, N.Y. - Entering one of the hottest environmental debates in the state, the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki has for the first time called for the dredging of the Hudson River to remove potentially harmful PCBs. For years, the state has been questioning whether more should be done at the bottom of the river, where an estimated 1 million pounds of PCBs remain. The decision to support dredging is a major blow to the General Electric Co., which discharged the PCBs into the river for about 30 years under permits from the state.

Five picturesque creeks and coves in eastern Baltimore County are being dredged and another four will be scooped in an aggressive $2 million project to enrich the environment and continue to attract recreational boaters.The deepening of the channels is considered crucial to the environment because the process allows sunlight to reach the submerged grasses that serve as natural banquets for fish and crabs. Also, the ebb and flow of tides, or flushing, is vastly improved because of easier passage of water from the creeks into Middle River.

Two watermen are trying to stop the Chesapeake Bay Foundation from conducting educational experiments on an oyster bar just south of the Bay Bridge. The watermen, who work the Hackett's Point oyster bar, have asked the state Department of Natural Resources to deny the foundation its long-held permit to operate a power dredge on the bar. The foundation uses the dredge to scoop up oysters, lets students look at them, and then puts them back in the water. But the oystermen say the scooping is hurting their livelihood.

Lake dredging and construction for a new Columbia Association headquarters top the list of capital expenditures in the association's proposed 2007 and 2008 budgets, to be discussed in a public forum tomorrow at Slayton House in Wilde Lake. The proposals - $50.8 million for fiscal 2007 and $53.4 million for the fiscal year after - include the largest capital budget requests in more than a decade, and would earmark $8.2 million over the two years to dredge lakes Kittamaqundi in Town Center and Elkhorn in Owen Brown.

For at least 20 years, the headwaters of Marley Creek have been little more than a mud flat at low tide. But by next spring, the water should be deep enough for boats to pass and, with luck, clean enough for residents to swim in.The county is to begin dredging a 5-foot-deep channel this month, beginning at Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard and ending 3,900 feet downstream. The work is to start 20 years after it was proposed."We're grateful it's being dredged after all these years because it is waterfront property," said Charles Cage, 57, who has lived in the 7800 block of Leymar Road for 20 years.