Army Corps denies permit for Winthrop beach restoration
(Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff)
Sunbathers on the seawall in Winthrop last summer, where houses and the ocean are separated by only a few dozen yards.
By Katheleen Conti, Globe Staff
The US Army Corps of Engineers announced today that it has denied the state a permit to dredge 500,000 cubic yards of sand from the ocean bottom to bolster 37 acres of the eroded Winthrop Beach shoreline, dashing the hopes of residents who blame erosion for flooding problems in the area.
In a written statement, Brigadier General Todd T. Semonite, the North Atlantic Division commander of the Corps, said that the decision was made "due to public interest factors and the availability of less environmentally damaging alternatives."
The proposal called for dredging up sand 8 miles offshore and hauling it by barge to the shore because it would have taken years to truck the sand through the town's narrow residential streets.
In a settlement reached last year between the state and the Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association, which strongly objected to the project based on the possibility it would threaten lobster and other species, the state agreed to a one-time-only use of the dredging site; that there would be no dredging of the area for 15 years afterward; a moratorium on overall ocean floor dredging for five years; and to commit to a $250,000 lobster monitoring study in the area.
The state Department of Conservation and Recreation has been trying to get approval for the dredging for the past decade. The National Marine Fisheries Service office in Gloucester, which was advising the Corps, objected, based on concerns about the impact to a habitat "essential to the survival of cod and other species," according to the statement.
Winthrop Beach area residents blame the beach erosion for a string of flooding problems over the years. A one-year independent study from 2004 to 2005, commissioned by the state Division of Marine Fisheries, which opposed the project, concluded that the dredging would not have a permanent negative effect on sea life.
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