Cos Cob Harbor and the Mianus River, which have seen their share of both commercial and pleasure boats over the past two centuries, will be getting a much-needed dredging in 2016.
The Army Corps of Engineers will dredge Cos Cob Harbor from buoy No. 9, just outside the Riverside Yacht Club, all the way up to Route 1, the Post Road. The harbor channel was last dredged in 1985, and since then large amounts of silt and sediment have accumulated, sometimes making passage difficult when the tide goes out.
By law, the channel needs to be six feet deep at low tide. “There are places where it’s two feet, three feet,” said Frank Mazza, chairman of the Greenwich Harbor Management Commission. “The upper part of the river is the worst part, so the Army Corps deems that it should be dredged. There are about 60,000 cubic yards of material that needs to be removed.”
The Army Corps is expected to begin the dredging in October 2016.
“The process should take about two months,” Mazza said. “They’ll start some time in October or November, but they anticipate being done by January at the latest. There are certain times of the year you can’t dredge because the clams are mating and because of environmental questions.
Mazza told the Greenwich Sentinel that the process of getting the Cos Cob Harbor dredged has been seven years in the making. The town of Greenwich had asked the Army Corps to dredge the channel, but budget limitations kept putting it off.
Since Cos Cob Harbor is designated by a Federal Navigation Channel, the Army Corps is supposed to maintain and dredge it.
“What happened was, the Army Corps is short of money and has been for a number of years,” Mazza said. “So they’ve taken these channels which are not what they call ‘huge tonnage channels,’ where there are shipping and a lot of commerce going into them, and said that they are unable to dredge these channels.”
That’s when the state of Connecticut stepped in and provided money for towns to dredge their siltiest channels.
“We originally got a $2 million bond issued and we had to go back and get another one, so there are $3 million in bonds that have been issued for the job and are presently in the Department of Transportation of Connecticut,” Mazza said. “They have to be transferred to the Army Corps of Engineers, which supposedly is in process now.”
Once the Army Corps gets the bonds, it will carry out the dredging. The corps already did the surveying of the channel and all the work required to get the job started. Currently, they are in the process of securing permits, which Mazza said is a daunting task.
“It has to go through a lot of different agencies,” Mazza said. “They’ve gone through most of them now. The Connecticut DEEP is onboard in terms of dumping in Western Long Island Sound, where there is designated area to dump the dredge material. There are still a couple more things to go through in the process and there’s another agency, which is a combination of Connecticut and New York, and they both have to agree that it’s the proper place to dredge.”
Cos Cob Harbor and the Mianus River have a vibrant history.
When the channel was designated by the Federal Government back in the 1800’s, there was abundant commerce passing through it. Boats came in and out of the Cos Cob channel all the time. In fact, Cos Cob was a busy seaport with a profusion of working docks.
Right on River Road was the Palmer Engine Company, one of the country’s earliest boat engine manufacturers. Palmer Engine was founded in the late 1880’s and produced telephones before it switched to boat engines. Mianus Motor Works, established in the early 1900’s, also found a home on the harbor.
Upriver stood a mason supply yard, among other businesses along the Mianus. In addition to the myriad fishing boats based there, vessels that carried town-grown produce and town-made textiles would travel regularly from the Mianus River and Cos Cob Harbor to New York City.
“Now it’s basically pleasure boats,” Mazza said. “There’s still a fishing boat that goes out of here a couple of times a day, but it’s mostly pleasure boats. That’s all a part of the economy and that’s all very important for our economy, to be able to keep the pleasure boat industry and all the home marine industry operating.”
