WELLFLEET — It’s been so long since the mooring field in the harbor was dredged that those most familiar with the marina can only guess how many boats it might hold. The 24-acre mooring field is clogged with 67 years’ worth of mud.
Wellfleet Harbor
INTO THE MUCK
Wellfleet Board Delays Dredging for Another Year
A stalled $4.5-million override request risks the loss of a $2.5-million grant
WELLFLEET — The harbor mooring basin here was last dredged in 1957. The job, which has been on the town’s agenda for a decade, will now be delayed for yet another year — because the select board has decided not to ask town meeting voters for $4.48 million to pay for a permit.
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The delay means that the town will likely lose a $2.5-million MassWorks grant awarded in 2022 when the dredging was originally set to start. The state had previously agreed to extend the deadline until this coming June 30. But it is unlikely to extend the grant for another year, said former dredging task force chair Chris Allgeier.
“I would be surprised if they even entertained a conversation about deferring it again,” Allgeier said. The town will most likely have to reapply for the grant, he said, but “the risk now is how many more grants will we get from the state?”
At its March 12 meeting, the select board agreed to scrap a warrant article authorizing payment of a $4.48-million fee imposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to receive a dredging permit. The Corps maintains that dredging the 24-acre mooring field would disrupt fish habitat there.
The select board spent the last year working with the town’s dredging task force to develop a mitigation plan as an alternative to paying the permit fee. That plan involved dedicating 28 acres in Blackfish Creek to an oyster restoration project, but the board ultimately rejected the plan because of doubts about its viability. Last November, the board decided that the town should just pay the $4.48 million.
But scheduling issues and fear that the request for so much money would be turned down by voters have now led the select board to withdraw the request.
The board voted to move town meeting to May 20 after Town Administrator Rich Waldo and Assistant Town Administrator Silvio Genao both resigned and the board fell behind in preparing the warrant for an April town meeting. The new date meant that a ballot question seeking approval for a Proposition 2½ override for the dredging fee would have come before voters at the April 29 town election before they could debate the issue on town meeting floor. Select board members worried that would decrease the likelihood of the override’s approval, said vice chair John Wolf.
Select board chair Barbara Carboni said that the town will revisit the dredging fee request at a special town meeting in the fall. Between now and then, Carboni said, the town and the dredging task force “will be reviewing options.”
Allgeier had developed the mitigation plan with dredging task force member Curt Felix. They both resigned from the task force following the select board’s Aug. 22 vote to abandon the plan. The current task force, made up of chair Joe Aberdale, Chris Merl, and Alfred Picard, has not met since October, according to agendas posted on the town website.
Without a state grant, and with the effects of inflation, the cost of dredging the mooring field could rise to around $10 million, Allgeier said. The town currently has $2.9 million left in its funds for dredging, which means it would need about $7 million more to complete the project — in addition to the permit fee.
And the permit fee itself is set to increase this year, Allgeier said. Last October, a spokesperson for the Div. of Fish and Game, the agency that administers the fee through a state program, told the town that the agency is looking to increase its fee structure by 30 percent in 2024. That means the cost of the permit could balloon to $5.8 million.
“By kicking the warrant article to the fall, there is a greater likelihood that the fee will increase,” said Allgeier.
One Option: Do Nothing
If voters reject an override request this fall, then the town can either go back to developing a mitigation plan or continue putting the request on the ballot until it does pass, Allgeier said. “The other option,” he added, “is to do nothing.”
But doing nothing would mean that the 8 to 12 feet of black custard currently sitting in the mooring basin would continue to spill into adjacent shellfish beds and funnel into the federal channel, which the Army Corps spent $5 million to dredge in the project’s first phase in 2020.
The buildup of muck in the mooring basin has cost the town $80,000 a year from the loss of 270 moorings that cannot be accessed. Wolf, who runs a commercial charter from the harbor, said that the mooring field is inaccessible for two hours on either side of low tide.
In 2015, when the town was petitioning the Army Corps to commit funds to dredge the federal channel, town officials wrote that the “economic ripple effect” has meant “tens of millions of dollars in lost opportunities for local businesspeople.” Various businesses, including Bay Sails Marine, Wellfleet Marine Corp., and Billingsgate Charters, wrote supporting letters saying that revenue has decreased by over 50 percent in recent years.
The Shellfish Advisory Board also submitted a letter to the Corps, saying that the sediment “poses a risk to the overall health of our shellfish, specifically by the possibility of it sliding off the top of the current channel banks and smothering many of those oysters that have begun to establish themselves in Chipman’s Cove and Duck Creek.”
Shellfisherman William “Chopper” Young, whose aquaculture grant directly abuts the mooring field, said that the silt is knee-high in parts of his grant. “When it gets to that level, everything dies,” Young said. “Nothing can live in it.”
Is Another Way Possible?
At its March 21 meeting, the select board authorized Wolf to engage the town’s Congressional delegation to ask the Army Corps to remove the mitigation requirement altogether.
The Corps has argued that, because the mooring field has not been dredged in more than 50 years, it has become an essential habitat for marine and estuarine finfish and shellfish species. Invoking the Clean Water Act, the Corps said that dredging would result in adverse effects on aquatic resources of national importance, and the town would need to mitigate the effects either through a restoration project or through paying a fine.
But Wolf believes that the Army Corps’s determination that the mooring field is a productive habitat is wrong. Various studies conducted by the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) and the town’s engineering firm for the project, GEI Consulting, back his claim, Wolf said.
GEI’s 2018 study concluded that “very few living organisms were found” in the basin, and that dredging would have “no permanent significant impact to essential fish habitat.”
A 2019 CCS study titled “Benthic Habitat Mapping in Wellfleet Harbor and Vicinity” found that 31 invertebrate species made up 95 percent of all individuals in the black custard. And a CCS study the subsequent year found that black custard is “low in species diversity” — roughly 90 percent of documented species were sea worms.
But the town’s previous attempts at persuading the Corps to lessen its demands failed. Those attempts included efforts by lobbyist Ray Bucheger of FBB Federal Relations with support from Rep. Bill Keating and senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren. The Corps did not budge, however, and in 2021 the agency formally imposed the mitigation requirement.
Wolf said he believed the town’s failure to influence the Corps was because of a mix-up in communications. While Bucheger was lobbying the Congressional delegation, GEI had already started engaging with the Corps to develop a mitigation plan.
“We had two negotiations going on at the same time,” said Wolf. He added that the mix-up resulted in Bucheger severing ties with the town. “Now it is up to me to make a case.”
Allgeier said he is not optimistic about chances that the Corps will bend. “The discussion has been held many times with the Corps,” he said. “I consider it a long shot.”
THE DREDGE REPORT
Final Dredging of Wellfleet Harbor Is Put Off for a Year
Corps of Engineers insists on land exchange or $14.5-million ‘mitigation’ fee
WELLFLEET — The dredging of the mooring field at Wellfleet Harbor will not happen this fall.
The final phase of the $20-million three-year project to clear silt and muck from the harbor was supposed to begin in September but has been postponed for a year because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will not issue a permit for it.
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The select board was updated on what has been happening with the project on Aug. 2, just weeks before the final phase was expected to begin and only days after the state announced a $2.5-million grant for the dredging. The news, from project manager Dan Robbins of GEI Consultants and Harbormaster Will Sullivan, was not good.
Years of behind-the-scenes negotiations between U.S. Rep. Bill Keating’s office; the town’s lobbyist, Ray Bucheger of FBB Federal Relations; and the Army Corps were not successful in persuading the federal agency to classify the final phase as “maintenance” dredging. Instead, the Corps insists that because the mooring field known as Area 2 — containing 250 moorings — has not been dredged since 1957, it must be considered “improvement” dredging. The agency ruled that Area 2 has had nearly 60 years to revert to its natural state.
Under the federal Clean Water Act, projects that disturb a natural environment or a threatened species require a tradeoff, or “mitigation,” consisting of either money or conservation land. The town had already paid a mitigation fee of $30,000 for affecting the habitat of the diamondback terrapin during the dredging of the federal channel two years ago, Sullivan said.
If the Army Corps and the town cannot agree on acceptable parcels of land to be placed under conservation restrictions as mitigation, the town will have to pay $14.5 million to go forward with dredging the mooring field, Robbins said. Town Administrator Rich Waldo told the Independent this week that there is no way the town will pay that much, and so negotiations on possible conservation land designation continue.
The select board members expressed shock that town officials had received contractors’ bids in July to dredge the 23.8 acres of the mooring field while knowing that the mitigation requirements had not been met. The contractors were supposed to stage their equipment in September to begin dredging, said John Wolf, who is the select board’s liaison on the dredging task force.
“I am seeing a lot of carts before a lot of horses here,” Wolf said on Aug. 2. “We had the contract out to bid and contracts back and we don’t have a permit. I’d like an explanation for the delays.”
The Explanation
Waldo said requests for proposals went out in June to position the town to move quickly in case “we get traction with the Army Corps. We wanted to be ready to move forward as quickly as possible.”
The town has known since 2017 that the Army Corps deemed the mooring field plan improvement dredging, Robbins said. That is why, in 2020, the Corps granted permission for the project to be split into two areas, Sullivan said. Area 1 encompasses the federal channel and the area around the town pier.
Area 1 was dredged in 2020 and 2021. Town officials, meanwhile, were working with a supportive Congressional delegation including U.S. senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Keating’s office to address the sticky problem of mitigation for Area 2, Sullivan said. Those negotiations progressed quietly with Sullivan, the town’s consultants and lobbyist, legislative staff, and a revolving door of town administrators — Dan Hoort, Maria Broadbent, Charles Sumner, and now Waldo — in the loop. With Markey’s, Warren’s, and Keating’s support, the town’s position for years has been to offer no mitigation, Sullivan said.
The select board — and the public — was not informed about all of this because the officials were trying to find a way to avoid mitigation without it appearing that they were working around the rules, Sullivan said.
That silence ended on Aug. 2. That’s when Joe Aberdale, co-chair of the Wellfleet Dredging Task Force, complained at the select board’s meeting that Sullivan and Robbins had failed to respond to a Oct. 27, 2021 letter from the Army Corps. The letter formally notified the town that it would have to provide mitigation for the dredging of Area 2. Aberdale said no one filled out the accompanying mitigation forms as required. So, on March 8, 2022, Robert J. DeSista, chief of policy and technical support for the Army Corps, informed the town it had “closed” the permit application for Area 2 “without prejudice.”
Aberdale told the select board the failure of communication had caused a significant delay.
Aberdale’s complaint prompted Wolf to order town officials to provide the select board with all of the correspondence related to the dredging of Area 2. On Aug. 2 the select board received nearly 1,000 pages of emails, letters, and permits.
Aberdale declined to speak to the Independent, citing a Jan. 2 email from Assistant Town Administrator Rebecca Roughley chastising him for breaking the “chain of command” and speaking to the town’s lobbyist and others in Washington, D.C. about the project. The select board in May 2021 had made Sullivan the only point of contact.
Officials’ Defense
Sullivan contradicted many of Aberdale’s assertions. First, Sullivan said, “closing” the permit application does not mean it is dead in the water. It is just the way the Army Corps puts the project on hold until a mitigation plan comes together, he said.
Sullivan acknowledged that he and Robbins did not respond immediately to the letter from the Army Corps. He said they “missed it” for about two weeks. But even after reading it, the officials chose a strategy of not responding because they still hoped for a work-around, Sullivan said.
Behind the scenes, Sullivan said, the consultants never stopped working on potential areas for mitigation. These included the two parcels that the town placed in the custody of the Wellfleet Conservation Commission at the June 2022 town meeting: 2.06 acres of wetlands in Blackfish Creek and 3.26 acres of wetlands in the Fresh Brook Estuary off Lieutenant Island Road. Sullivan said officials did not explain publicly that these properties were potentially part of the mitigation plan to complete the dredging. He said they wanted the conservation efforts to stand on their own merits. If there had been opposition to the transfers, Sullivan added, they would have explained the mitigation issue at town meeting.
The other area they offered as potential mitigation is the 254.5-acre HDYLTA (How Do You Like Them Apples) shellfish flats off Indian Neck, which the town bought in 2019 for $2 million to protect them from being bought by unnamed out-of-town entities. Early communications with the Army Corps indicated that those three parcels would earn nearly all the “mitigation credits” necessary to do the dredging, Robbins said.
But on Aug. 2 the select board balked at using the HDYLTA flats in that way. Board member Ryan Curley said he worried it could lead to shellfishermen being denied access to their grants.
Next Steps
The select board instructed town staff to offer as mitigation a list of all the properties that the town has transferred into the custody of the conservation commission.
The three bids to begin the dredging this fall ranged from $3.7 to $4.9 million, from Burnham Associates, Jay Cashman, and Robert B. Our. The town will now have to put out a new request for proposals next year.
The town remains eligible for the $2.5-million state grant as long as there is a dredging contract in place by June 30, 2023, Waldo said.
“So, we would need a permit before that,” Waldo said. He hopes that the Army Corps and town can reach a mitigation agreement before town meeting in the spring.
Wolf and Curley both insisted that Sullivan update them regularly on progress.
THE DREDGE REPORT
Shellfishermen, Scientists Study Wellfleet’s Goo
‘Black custard’ isn’t toxic, but it can be perilous
WELLFLEET — Chopper Young was working on his oyster grant one day when a shrill note pierced Chipman’s Cove. Stranded in the mucky tidal flats was a woman in a kayak. She puffed on her whistle, over and over. “Fire and rescue were down there already,” Young said, “but they couldn’t reach her.”
He decided to take matters into his own hands. Wading out into the gummy harbor, Young tossed the woman a rope and tugged her out of the mud.
But not without sinking in himself, said Young, “balls deep.”
This Week In Wellfleet
Meetings Ahead
Meetings are held remotely. From wellfleet-ma.gov, hover over a date on the calendar on the right of the screen and click on the meeting you’re interested in to open its agenda and find out how to view and take part remotely.
Thursday, March 25
- School Committee Superintendent Search Subcommittee, 10:15 a.m.
- Zoning Board of Appeals, 7 p.m.
Friday, March 26
- Bike and Walkways Committee, 9 a.m.
Monday, March 29
- Dredging Task Force, 7 p.m.
Tuesday, March 30
- Elections: Districtwide Nauset Regional H.S. Project and Special Town Election, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Conversation Starters
Curley Report Revisited
The Natural Resources Advisory Board (NRAB) and the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) hope to replicate a 1972 survey of marine resources in Wellfleet Harbor. Owen Nichols, director of marine fisheries research at the CCS, and John Riehl, chair of NRAB, presented the proposed project at the Shellfish Advisory Board meeting on March 17, and the board voted to support it.
The original survey, known as the Curley Report, was conducted by the Mass. Div. of Marine Fisheries and involved systematic sampling and inventorying of species. The authors recommended replicating the study every 10 years. Now, nearly 50 years later, the NRAB is drafting a warrant article seeking funds for the project at town meeting this spring.
As recommended in the March 2021 Harbor Management Plan, the year-long project would investigate the flora and fauna in the harbor. This would, as written in the draft article, establish a “basis for future actions to preserve and enhance this environment.”
The survey would develop a framework for long-term monitoring, said Nichols. In planning the project, they are seeking input from the community to determine which questions should be asked. “As we plan this project, you will have a say in what happens,” said Riehl. —Tessera Knowles-Thompson
ECONOMY
For Wellfleet Shellfishermen, Farmers Market Is ‘Pure Good News’
On the town pier: oysters to go
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WELLFLEET — For local shellfishermen, good news this fall was in short supply. Covid’s shuttering of restaurants across the country had wreaked havoc on the wholesale distribution chain, usually a reliable summer boon. Winter — a tight season, even in the Before Times — loomed with no chance of a national reopening by Christmas.
The market, said Wellfleet Shellfish Constable Nancy Civetta, “had just crashed.” That left farmers, draggers, and foragers strapped for cash and short on hope. And efforts to regain their footing proved limited by, of all things, their home state.
Other New England states allow commercial shellfishermen to sell directly to consumers. Even if restaurant sales dry up, fishermen can offer their product to friends, family, and neighbors. Massachusetts takes a different approach. It restricts the sale of shellfish to licensed wholesale dealers, whose distribution patterns Covid-19 left in tatters. This fall, Wellfleet’s shellfishermen found themselves faced with a pileup of legal, viable, delicious product — and no way to sell it.
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“There’s a lack of parity with the other states, which is a real problem,” said Ginny Parker, president of the Wellfleet Shellfishermen’s Association (WSA). In November, Parker said, she petitioned the state Div. of Marine Fisheries (DMF) to temporarily allow direct grower sales. The division denied her request.
That led to a brainstorming session with Civetta, Selectman Ryan Curley, Assistant Harbormaster Will Sullivan of the Wellfleet Shellfish Advisory Board, and Joshua Reitsma, a fisheries and aquaculture specialist with the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension.
From that meeting emerged the Wellfleet Shellfishermen’s Farmers Market, a collaborative effort in which the town handled negotiations with DMF and the state’s Dept. of Public Health along with inspections, WSA serves as the promoter, and Wellfleet’s Holbrook Oyster Company, a licensed distributor, is acting as the dealer of record.
The first shellfish market was held on the Wellfleet pier on Dec. 12, the second a week later.
“We know what it’s like to not have a market,” said Zack Dixon, a co-owner, with Jacob and Justin Dalby, of Holbrook Oyster. “So, if there’s anything we can do to help create a market, of course we’re going to do it.”
The market is open to all Wellfleet commercial shellfishermen, who can opt in on a week-by-week basis. Their names, products, and prices are posted on WellfleetShellfishermen.org, where customers can order oysters and clams until 10 a.m. on market days (upcoming dates are Dec. 30, then every Saturday starting again Jan. 9).
Three vendors participated in the market’s first go-around on Dec. 12. Holbrook Oyster sold its own product, as well as distributing other shellfishermen’s. Evan Bruinooge of Outta Bed Oyster Company offered farmed oysters and will have cherrystone and topneck clams, too. Austin and Jared Ziemba sold wild Wellfleet oysters. Three additional shellfishermen joined for the operation’s second week, on Dec. 19: Sonya Woodman, a wild picker, and farmers Jeremy Storer and Pete Brundage.
The variety of vendors and the chance to learn about them is a good thing, said Civetta. She also made the point that oysters from different locations can taste different, even though they are all grown in Wellfleet. The market, she said, “offers a taste of all the different nuances and flavors and nooks and crannies of Wellfleet Harbor.”
“Each oysterman and woman is kind of developing his own following,” said Parker. And just two weeks in, business is strong. Civetta said Dec. 12 saw about 65 preorders and a few dozen walk-up customers. On Dec. 19, over a hundred preorders and a fresh slew of walk-in customers generated so much traffic that a line of cars stretched all the way from the pier to Mayo Beach; the next market will take place at the bandstand to avoid a pileup.
The organizers would not provide exact numbers on how many customers came or how much shellfish was sold. But Civetta did say that the first market sold more than 2,000 oysters and clams and that number jumped to more than 5,000 on Dec. 19. Parker said that, both weeks, every vendor completely sold out of his or her product.
Each shellfisherman sells any preordered product to Holbrook Oyster before it gets distributed to customers. Oysters go to consumers for a dollar a piece; Holbrook collects a nickel per oyster, and credit card processing fees shave off a few more cents. So, although their market reach is reduced, the shellfishermen’s per-oyster profits are high.
For all its success — Civetta called the market “extremely well-supported” by the community, and Parker called it “pure good news” — worry is still a constant.
That’s because the market doesn’t come close as a replacement for the kind of business shellfishermen are missing right now. “I don’t ever see this taking the place of the normal commerce that happens,” Civetta said.
THE WATERFRONT
Dredging of Federal Channel Begins at Last
Army Corps arrives to launch three-year harbor project
WELLFLEET — It took a town-wide effort, a federal campaign, and 26 years, but the dredging of Wellfleet Harbor’s federal channel is set to begin on Oct. 1.
“It’s just incredibly exciting,” said Wellfleet Harbormaster Michael Flanagan. “It’ll be absolutely night and day.”
WHALEWATCH
Young Humpback Stranded at ‘the Gut’ Succumbs
WELLFLEET— A juvenile humpback whale that was stranded on Saturday, Feb. 8, inside the sandbar known as “the gut” by the Herring River was found dead on Monday afternoon.
The humpback was 25 feet long, about half the size of a full-grown animal, and a health assessment conducted by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) stranding network on Saturday found it to be “severely emaciated,” said Nicole Hunter of IFAW.