The Maintenance Dredging of Green Harbor In Marshfield MA.

    Green Harbor in Marshfield MA has historically been dredged by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers trailing hopper dredge Currituck. However The percentage of large stones in the harbor had come to prevent the small hopper dredge from doing an effective job. In its history many attempts had been made to create a channel that would provide a long term solution to shoaling in what had come to be known as Green Harbor narrows. This year The Corps in partnership with the town of Marshfield and the State Seaport Council decided to make the commitment to enlarge the channel to its full authorised dimmensions. They also sloped the East side of the channel (that with the highest elevations) at a very stable 5 on 1 slope. However the intersection of enviromental windows and available funding left only a 45 day window, a window that began to close almost as soon as it opened with the arrival of a week long NorEaster.

Upon arrival Dredge Samson began clearing space for itself to sit through the tide cycle. Initially there was not even enough depth available to allow the dredge to sit through the large spring tide cycles.

Pictured above one can see (on the left) the existing natural channel as opposed to the full width of the authorized channel (to the right). This project also diiferered from most dredging projects in that we were rmoving a significant amount of dry land. essentially removing the narrows from Green Harbor altogether.

Samsom III pictured here in the "narrows". One of the major challenges of this project was accomodating the ever increasing volume of boat traffic. We were greatly relieved at the level of cooperation we recieved from the local lobstermen, and charterboats. There were times when the harbor was just plain closed, but we managed with very few exeptions to keep everyone moving, if not somewhat delayed.