By Larry Barszewski
There’s good news for boaters — the Intracoastal Waterway near the Boynton Inlet is being dredged for the first time in 12 years — but expect a boatload of inconveniences this month as the work continues, including the closing of the Harvey Oyer Park ramp for about a week.
The dredged sand is also good news for Ocean Ridge as it will be used to shore up the coastline in the town near Palm Beach County’s Hammock Park — but you won’t be able to stand on any of the new beach sand unless you go in the water. That’s where the sand is going.
“This isn’t that large dredge project that you’ll see every six to eight years that really widens the beach; this is more of a smaller project,” said Andy Studt, environmental program supervisor for Palm Beach County’s coastal resource management, which is overseeing the $1.9 million project. It’s expected to place about 63,000 cubic yards of sand near the shore, he said.
“We’ll be adding it below the water line, but it will add to the near-shore system and strengthen the beach over the near term,” Studt said.
The county also plans “a follow-on project this coming winter in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers to restore storm damages, where we’ll be placing about half-a-million cubic yards from an offshore bar source,” he said.
“That’s the one that’ll really widen the beach and protect us from future storm events, both for Boynton Beach Oceanfront Park and about a mile south of the inlet.”
Studt’s comments came during the Boynton Beach City Commission’s April 1 meeting. The dredged sand is coming from three interior shoal areas in the Intracoastal: from a county sand trap immediately adjacent to the inlet, from the Intracoastal’s main navigational channel in partnership with the Florida Inland Navigation District, and from the Oyer Park boat channel in partnership with Boynton Beach.
“We have discussed it with city staff and it sounds like the best way forward is to close the boat ramp for a short period of time while we’re dredging the western part of the Oyer Park boat channel,” Studt said. “When we stick a dredge in that small channel area, it’s not going to be safe to navigate around it.”
Commissioner Thomas Turkin was relieved that the work is finally being done, but not that it took so long.
“You said the last time this was dredged was 2013. How can we ensure we don’t wait that long … that we don’t have this large of a lapse again?” Turkin asked. “There’s a lot of recreational use there, but also a lot of commercial use, a lot of people’s businesses that rely on that boat ramp, you know, that allow them to put food on the table for their families.”
Future dredging should occur more frequently, Studt said. In the past, the county had to get individual permits each time it wanted to dredge.
“This time we’ve got about a 15-year permit where we can go out multiple times within that time period and dredge as needed — the city’s channel and our sand trap,” Studt said.
Because of the extended permit, the county also may be able to let Boynton Beach do more frequent dredging of the park’s boat channel if it desires. In that case, the dredged sand probably wouldn’t go to the beach but be used in a habitat restoration project along the Intracoastal, Studt said.
The delay in the current dredging project was caused in part because the county didn’t know the last time the western part of the Oyer boat channel had been dredged.
“We know it’s been dredged in the past,” Studt said, but the county could not find a record of it with the Army Corps or the city. “So, since there wasn’t a record, it had to be considered new dredging. We had to go through the mitigation process.”
Boynton Beach commissioners were also upset about the timing, especially the impact on the long-planned Boynton Beach Firefighter Fishing Tournament and Firehouse Chili Cook-off at Oyer Park on April 26 that could be jeopardized.
“It’s not just a fishing tournament for our fire guys, it’s a fundraising effort,” Commissioner Aimee Kelley said.
The tournament, with more than $10,000 in cash and prizes, is sponsored by the Boynton Beach Firefighter Benevolent Association and raises money for the association and the city’s Kiwanis Club.
Studt said he couldn’t guarantee the tournament would be unaffected, but would work to try to avoid a conflict. The timeline is cutting it close, given how dependent the work is on the weather.
That Oyer Park channel work has been “ballparked” to start between April 14 and 21.
“We’re hopeful for a week or less dredging the city channel area and then we’ll have it cleared out for the next couple of years presumably,” Studt said.
The Oyer Park channel has to be done last because the county will need to bring in a smaller dredge to handle the narrower boat channel, he said.
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