I hate to stay on a negative note, but the Port of Peninsula has a lot of failed project skeletons in their closet, one of which is their dredge.

Like Ilwaco, the Port of Peninsula just had to have a dredge so they could dredge the port’s basin. So, they bought a new one a few years back, a rototiller type cutter dredge that includes dredge pipe and a trailer. The unconfirmed cost was somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000, but without access to port records I’m only guessing based on my phone calls. You can now find it rusting, hidden under multiple tarps. I don’t believe it has left the trailer it was delivered on.

What went wrong is simple. You need a location to dispose of material being dredged, which the port had 20 years ago until they turned the area into shell and junk storage. Well, that might not have mattered anyway based on the port’s current track record with permitting agencies. To dredge would have required review and likely several permits from both federal and state agencies, and we know how port Executive Director Jay Personius and the commissioners have fared when it comes to permit compliance.

The other issue is design of the dredge. It’s basically a rototiller and water pump that pushes the material ground up with the tiller head up a pipe to a disposal location. The problem is the port area, as one might guess, will have a collection of cable and junk along the bottom. That rotating head will simply wrap the material up and stall, perhaps even stuck to some debris until a diver cuts loose the material. This dredge is designed to remove vegetation and I don’t see a lot of vegetation problems at the port.

The other problem even Ilwaco faces yearly is the time period allowed for in water dredging is short, so you need to move a lot of material in a short time period, which this dredge is not designed to do. Had some thought gone into this dredge purchase, it would not have occurred. Personius pushed to buy it without planning and sold the idea to the commissioners. Why, it’s only tax money — no big deal.

This is what happens when there is no solid planning, just an idea gone wrong. Look around the port and you can see several of these ideas just rusting away.

CHUCK MIKKOLA

Klipsan