Work has begun on a long-awaited project to remove hundreds of millions of pounds of contaminated muck from around wharves, marinas, boatyards, and public boat launches in Portland Harbor.
For decades, wharf owners and vessel operators have watched helplessly as sediment has slowly piled up along the Portland and South Portland waterfronts. As the deposits have accumulated, berths for boats of all types have disappeared—one by one for years on end.
A new multiyear dredging project that kicked off in January will remove sediment from dozens of areas along the working waterfronts. Dredging places that haven’t been cleaned out for over 70 years—and more than a century in some cases—will open up space for fishing vessels, work boats, ferries and cruise ships, recreational craft, and other vessels in Maine’s busiest port.
If all eligible waterfront property owners participate, dredging will take place along 19 piers and ten marinas and boatyards…
If all eligible waterfront property owners participate, dredging will take place along 19 piers and ten marinas and boatyards in Portland and South Portland, as well as at Portland’s public boat launch and commercial boat landing at East End Beach.
According to Bill Needelman’s estimates, the central waterfront on the Portland side of the harbor has lost more than a quarter of its berths over the years. They have become unusable because of shallow water depths brought on by accumulated sediment.
“A harbor without boat berthing is not a harbor,” said Needelman, the waterfront coordinator for the city of Portland. “The foundational resource of a harbor is its ability to serve the vessel and the ability to transport goods, people, and services. So by maintaining the berthing stock for Portland Harbor, we maintain all the commercial activity of the harbor.”
Parker Poole, owner of Determination Marine salvage and towing company, said his two largest boats now rest on the mud at their berths on two wharfs during extreme low tides. That’s not a good thing when your business includes responding to boaters in distress.
“We’re the guy you call when you’re having a bad day,” he said. “In my business, seconds and minutes matter. If we get down to the boat to go on emergency call of a boat sinking and we can’t get the boat off the dock for an hour, that really doesn’t work for anybody.”
The navigational channel in the middle of Portland Harbor is dredged every 15 years or so by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But the harbor bottom closer to shore—along the wharves, marinas and other spots—is left up to individual property owners.
Dredging that material is cost-prohibitive because of the high levels of heavy metals, pesticides, and other pollutants from shipyards, tanneries, metal foundries, and other industrial sites that were once common in the Portland area, dating back to the mid-1800s. Toxic pollution has also come from nonpoint sources, particularly contaminated stormwater runoff.
Because of that pollution, the dredged muck is too contaminated to dispose of at an approved dredge disposal site about seven miles offshore. Instead, wharf owners would have had dispose of the material at a hazardous waste disposal site on land, a cost-prohibitive alternative.
The solution is to get rid of the polluted dredge material in a nine-acre containment pit near the South Portland side of the harbor. Cashman Dredging, out of Quincy, Mass., began digging the pit, known as a “confined aquatic disposal cell,” or CAD, in mid-January.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers CADs to be an environmentally safe and permanent solution for isolating contaminated sediments. CADs have been successfully used to dispose of contaminated dredge material in a number of other New England ports and waterways, such as Boston, New Bedford, and Providence.
After the CAD is dug, the contaminated sediment from around the waterfront properties will be put into the hole and covered with clean material at the end of each dredge season. In all, it’s estimated that about 245,000 cubic yards of contaminated material—enough to fill more than 20,000 standard dump trucks—will be dredged.
The dredging around the waterfront properties is scheduled to begin on a small scale this winter after the CAD is dug. It will continue through two more dredging seasons (November through mid-March) into March 2027.
To fund the project, property owners, the cities of Portland and South Portland, the Portland Harbor Commission, and others have worked together for years to find funding sources. They created a video called “Help Dig Us Out” two years ago to make their pitch for funding to federal and Maine officials and state lawmakers.
The final piece came together a year ago when the state released $10 million of federal funding toward the $25 million price tag. Another $6 million is coming from state transportation funds; $4 million from Portland; and $1 million from South Portland. The remainder will be paid for by wharf owners who will pay tipping fees based on how much material is dredged from around their waterfront properties.
John Henshaw, the vice chairman of the Portland Commission, said the project has been a long time in coming because of the complexity, the difficulty in securing funding, and the amount of people involved.
“It took longer than any of us ever thought, but we’re excited to see it happening,” Henshaw said. “It’s a novel approach where the cities of Portland and South Portland and the state got together to say ‘Let’s solve this problem.’ It’s not commonly done in other places.”
A few days after Cashman Dredging began digging the CAD in Portland Harbor, more than 100 people showed at a celebration in the former Snow Squall restaurant adjacent to a South Portland marina. Tom Meyers, chairman of the Waterfront Alliance, an organization committed to protecting and promoting the Port of Portland, said wharf owners have been anxious for the waterfront dredging to begin.
“They’re ready to go,” he said. “They’re champing at the bit.”
