Journal of a Sabbatical

November 9, 1999

dredged material management revisited

Tonight's bird list:
Watchemoket Cove

2 mute swans
1 ring billed gull with broken wing 
(it was dark at 10:00 at night and I don't have infrared binoculars)

Today's Reading: Born Naked by Farley Mowat

The Army Corps of Engineers hosted workshop tonight in Newport to follow up on last year's hearing on the draft Environmental Impact Statement on their plan for dredging the Providence River shipping channel. I had so much fun testifying at last year's hearing that I drove all the way to Newport, picking up Nancy at work in Middletown on the way, for tonight's workshop. We grabbed dinner at the Marriot's restaurant since the workshop was at the Marriot. It was ok but for $15 you think they would know how to slice grilled eggplant, but I digress.

Tonight's Corps of Engineers workshop was supposed to update the public on the project and let people know what's happening with the feedback they got last year. Dredging contractors, pilots, town/city officials, fishermen, shipping companies, lawyers, and all kinds of people with interest in Narragansett Bay showed up to see PowerPoint slides outlining several studies to address people's comments and concerns including: potential impact on the fish and lobster habitat at the Hog Island site; erosion of the dredged sediment, and models of how the plume of sediment will be distributed when the material is deposited. Cool animated PowerPoint slides showed how they modeled the sediment plume, and how different kinds of dredges work. Boy, PowerPoint has come a long way since I used to have to use it to present quality metrics in my previous life. Maybe if I'd had animated bug fix slides... Anyway, the point of the presentation seemed to be to convince people that the Corps had listened to what people had to say and were doing something to address the issues people raised.

Some Rotarians were having a party in the next room, periodically drowning out the speakers with renditions of Happy Birthday, You Are My Sunshine, and This Land Is Your Land. (Hmm, which of these tunes do you not expect to hear Rotarians singing?) Even the normally impassive Corps of Engineers people started laughing when the singing got really loud. It sounded like it was quite a party. Who knew the Rotary was so much fun?

I came to the workshop thinking that the unexpectedly fierce opposition to the Watchemoket Cove site (site 150) had caused them to drop it. They haven't. They have done more research on exactly what they'd be digging up to bury the CAD cell (see draft EIS). In fact, Nancy and I saw the sampling equipment in the harbor just outside the cove when we were walking on the East Bay Bike Path a couple of weeks ago. Basically, what's under the silt is sand from glacial times. Naturally I asked if they had taken into consideration my research that showed a great many more duck species using site 150 than they had mentioned in the draft. They have. They simply took my list and added it to theirs. I didn't get the impression anybody had actually researched much more on how much the project would disturb the duck habitat and how quickly they would recover. But at least I spoke up for the ducks. Nancy was passing me notes during the discussion of the biological studies that only mentioned fish and shellfish reading "Aggrieved buffleheads rise up" and such.

The guy who wants to fill in the cove gave his speech again claiming there is nothing in the cove except bird skeletons and muck. He wants to fill the whole thing and the two small coves just to the south and pave them over. Even though I know nobody is taking him seriously, I have this involuntary anger reaction - my heart starts beating fast and I get that fight or flight tingling sensation in my skin... almost like I'm the mother duck defending her ducklings. Fortunately, before I jumped on the guy (verbally, what were you thinking?), Paul Lamont, city manager for East Providence stood up and said he couldn't let that go by. The fill-it-in guy then wanted to know exactly who had observed these birds and the Corps guys pointed me out - the Audubon Society of Rhode Island woman had already left. Lamont started naming species he'd seen and asked me for confirmation.

The fill-it-in guy asked for a list of the names of everybody who commented on the draft, which is of course a matter of public record, and asked where he could see the list of bird species (which I gave to ASRI and to the Corps of Engineers). All the way back to Nancy's place I was convinced this guy was going to start stalking me. Nancy fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but I lay awake wondering if I'd made a fool of myself on account of the buffleheads...