The Massey’s Ditch Dredge Project Will Start Pumping Sand Today
The J.F. Brennan Company crews have been hard at work pulling long pipes into the inland bays and setting up the pump transfer stations. They have to move metric tons of sand. The dredge slurry, which is mostly sand will be pumped onto the northside beach at the Indian River Inlet.
If you are boating for some odd reason in January, I know striped bass, just be mindful of where these pipes are located. There is probably a long line of gulls resting along them, and you can see the pump transfer stations. The crews are starting on the Indian River Bay side of Massey’s Ditch. Unless you are coming from Rehoboth Bay you shouldn’t encounter the pipes going towards the Indian River Inlet.
This project is scheduled to be completed by the end of February. It will be nice to have a cleaned out channel. Now if we would just keep that crew here for a year or more and do the entire inland bays. Issue with that is this work can only be done in the winter due to environmental concerns.
Pipe is “running” along the inland bays, then up to the inlet through the old borrow pit by the Charles W Cullen Bridge on the north side. The pipe runs along the Indian River Inlet access road and Delaware Seashore State Park north entrance. Then the pipe was run under the road and bridge, and up and over the walk on access at the northside beach. There is a long pipe running down the beach.
You can see the pipe on the beach on the DelDOT traffic cam from the north tower. If you want to check that out download the DelDOT app on your droid phone or the DelDOT app for iPhones. Select the traffic camera layers section to access the traffic cameras. Then select the north tower traffic camera, and wait for it to pan for the view looking north towards Dewey Beach and the Life Saving Station Museum. The sand should start pumping onto the beach today.
Driscoll Drones by Chris Driscoll has been taking a lot of great aerial shots of the dredge equipment and shoals. It will be interesting to see his before, during. and after shots throughout the project.