Federal funding turned down for Put-In Creek dredging

Federal funding for a dredging project proposed for Put-In Creek in Mathews has been turned down by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

According to the 105-page report completed by the USACE Norfolk District, signed by Norfolk District commander Col. Paul B. Olsen and dated June 2012, the project is not economically justified because it doesn’t contribute to national economic development.

In addition, the project would involve disturbing wetlands, and, finally, the existing conditions in the creek don’t have “a significant detrimental impact on commercial seafood and charter boat operations.”

The report says that the cost of the project and the ongoing maintenance required if the creek were dredged would result in a zero cost/benefit ratio and net negative annual benefits ranging from -$83,568 to -$109,480, depending on the depth of the dredge. The cost/benefit ratio was based on responses to surveys completed by commercial watermen. Twelve local watermen turned in the surveys, the report states, but only eight of the documents were sufficiently complete to be used.

While the recreational benefits of such a project have been touted, the report says that civil works funds may only be used to support recreational development if the commercial benefits to a navigation project equal or exceed 50 percent of the average annual cost of the project. Since the commercial benefits were zero, no recreational benefits were calculated.

The report admits that, without a federal dredge project, it’s likely that the channel will continue to shoal and convert to vegetated wetlands, eventually becoming impassible to both commercial fishing boats and pleasure boats.
History of the project

The county has pursued dredging Put-In Creek for nearly a decade as a way to spur economic growth by providing boaters access to the creek and downtown Mathews—the county’s primary commercial hub. The county has also repeatedly expressed support for increasing access to the water for residents and the general public.

The project was the brainchild of the late L. Wayne Hudgins, who in 2004 proposed creating a boat basin, a dock, and 25 transient boat slips in the creek adjacent to the Court Green and Mathews Volunteer Fire Department Station 1.
The basin would be in approximately the footprint of a previous turning basin that was built at the site by the U.S. Works Progress Administration in 1934. Hudgins asserted that recreational boaters traveling along the Chesapeake Bay and the East Coast would welcome a protected harbor that was adjacent to a downtown area with numerous amenities.

“We have a visitor’s center, restaurants, a state-of-the-art library, two grocery stores, doctors, ministers, historic places, all within walking distance,” said Hudgins at that time. “Mathews County is an uncut diamond waiting to be refined.”
Former Del. Harvey Morgan agreed, saying that access to downtown Mathews would attract “snowbirds,” or boaters traveling north and south looking for places to stop for a couple of days. They would spend a couple of hundred dollars each, he said, then leave.

“Tourism is great,” said Morgan at that time. “People come, spend money, and go home. You don’t have to provide them with schools, services, or anything.”

In 2010, the county had the engineering and design firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin develop a study to determine the possible costs for providing access to Mathews Court House via Put-In Creek. VHB came up with three alternatives. The first was to dredge a channel three feet deep and 12 feet wide at a cost of $1.18 million. The second was to dig a five-foot-deep by 18-foot-wide channel at a cost of $2.075 million, and the third was to establish a mooring facility in deeper water at a cost of $30,000 so larger boats could access downtown in smaller dinghies.

At that time, Adrian Jennings of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said he would recommend against issuing a dredging permit for the project because of environmental concerns about disturbing a lush stand of wetlands grasses that has filled in the headwaters of the creek over time.

The Mathews Board of Supervisors decided not to pursue the dredging, but then the Army Corps announced it had received a $100,000 grant to study the feasibility of the project based on its possible contribution to national economic development.

After an initial meeting with the Corps last October, a committee of local residents was appointed to advise the Corps and help gather information to determine the project’s economic feasibility.

They sent out surveys to commercial watermen and charter boat operators to determine what the impact would be on their businesses if the channel were dredged.

According to the report, most of the watermen had already relocated their operations to other bodies of water, so the Corps concluded that a project in Put-In Creek would have minimal impact on commercial fishing. Surveys filled out by charter boat operators didn’t provide enough information to determine whether they would move their operations to Put-In Creek if the channel were dredged, says the report, so even though that might occur, no potential benefit could be quantified.

As part of the study, the Corps came up with four alternative dredging scenarios, each resulting in a 40-foot-wide channel, with depths of four, five, six, or seven feet. The costs were projected to be $743,875, $907,500, $927,500, and $993,750 respectively.