Dredging worries clammers> Project would ease journey for destroyers at BIW

PHIPPSBURG — A plan to dredge a portion of the Kennebec River to make way for destroyers at Bath Iron Works could mean trouble for clammers.

The mud diggers say they agree the dredging is warranted, but they don’t think enough is being done to prevent the project from polluting and perhaps smothering some of the bivalves.

Members of the Army Corps of Engineers, which plans to move about 50,000 cubic yards of the riverbed next month, met with clammers Thursday to tell them about the project.

At two sections of the river, the 500-foot-long destroyers have trouble steering past underwater ridges of sand that have collected along the bottom since 1989, when the river was last dredged.

At the worst spot, Doubling Point, the bottom rises in some places to within 21 feet of the surface, eight feet above the bottom of the ships. In the narrow, fast-moving channel, the ships are forced to make a near 180-degree turn to get past the rising sand.

The corps’ director of the project, William Kavanaugh, said he believes the impact on marine life in the area will be negligible. The material to be removed from the river bottom is about 95 percent sand, not the silt and other sediment that typically carries far along the currents, or breeds the bacteria that can force clam-flat closure.

Kavanaugh said the last dredging didn’t disrupt clamming along the river.