Norwalk Parks and Rec: Dredging did not destroy ramp

NORWALK, Conn. – Norwalk harbor keepers have a warning for boaters – don’t use the ramps at Veterans Park.

It’s been a steady refrain issued by Shellfish Commission Chairman Pete Johnson, who has said repeatedly that the recent Vets Park dredging has damaged the boat ramps. He also said planks were dropped on shellfish beds.

Thursday, several commission members chimed in to echo Johnson’s thoughts on the ramps. This is in direct opposition to comments made earlier this week by Parks and Recreation Director Mike Mocciae.

“Basically the bottom line is ‘thank you Peter,’ but it’s been 20 years too late to tell us that there’s problems with the launch ramps. We’ve been petitioning for money to redo these launch ramps for 20-plus years,” Mocciae said Monday.

Johnson said he witnessed the dredging company pull up parts of the ramp.

“I was there watching them,” he said. “They were taking them and throwing them on the natural bed. After they did that they dug at the end of where they took the planks out. So now it’s like a 5-foot drop. … At low tide the end of the ramp is gone. At half tide you’ve got about 10 feet of water. At high tide you might be able to get a 16-foot boat in.”

All of Norwalk is a natural shellfish bed, Johnson said. Shellfish can crop up anywhere.

“The stuff inside that mud, plankton, that’s what feeds everything,” Johnson said. “You cover it, you kill it. All of Norwalk is considered a natural bed. We’ve got places that haven’t had oysters in 10 years; you won’t have any, then all of a sudden there will be a set there. You could not have them for five years, then you’ve got them for 10 years in a row, then not, they’ve moved over to the other side of the river. It depends on the current flow. When they start to spawn you don’t know where they’re going to wind up. They attach to something, then they grow.”

Mocciae said shellfish might grow near the docks, but no one would harvest them. The mud is polluted, he said.

He agreed there is an issue at the bottom of the ramp.

“The boards randomly disappear and come up at any given time because of the fact that the main understructure is not sound anymore,” Mocciae said. “So could some of those boards come dislodged because of dredging? Maybe. Or just the bad winter, or people that were using them prior to that. So every spring we have to go down and replace as many as we can. That’s the issue because you can’t replace or fix them much anymore because there’s nothing to fix them to anymore. So we know there’s an issue at midtides or when there’s a very low tide because you can’t go down to a certain point because there’s no boards anymore anyway. So it didn’t have anything to do with dredging, except for the fact that that loosened some boards up. They were going to be loose anyway, they had to be repaired.”

The outside ramps haven’t been used in more than 30 years, he said. The dredging was the first step in a plan to resolve all of this, he said.

“Every spring it’s a panic because we don’t know what’s left,” Mocciae said. “We don’t know what we have to do to repair it and get it working. So the first step of that was to get a dredge. The second step is looking for new money this year for engineering of new ramps, which so far is in the budget. Thirdly, next year, we’ll be looking for money to redo the ramps themselves, through the city and the state. So it’s a progression. We know the ramps are bad, Pete. But 20 years. If you sent those pictures 20 years ago you would have been a bigger help than complaining now.”

There is a $75,000 request in the 2014-15 capital budget for the engineering of new ramps. There is a request in the 2015-16 capital budget for $750,000 to cover building new ramps.

At this point, those requests are recommended for approval.

Councilman Jerry Petrini, chairman of the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Committee, said the dredging and ramp repair grew out of the recent development of a master plan for the park.

“That was one of the first things in the first 5-year plan of what we would need to do. The ramps were coming up and coming up. That’s why Mike put in this year for the engineering,” he said.

There is a 2016-17 capital budget request for $1.6 million for phase 1 of the Veterans Park Master Plan boating center, including parking. That is also recommended for approval.

Mocciae said he suspects that the dredging dug up “some of the old boards that were disconnected and way out at the end, that you couldn’t even get to to repair anymore.”

“It’s no worse than it was,” Petrini said.

Commission members said Johnson needs to get the post-dredging survey to see what really happened under the water.

Johnson has been complaining about that, too. There was a survey provided, but not to the same scale as the pre-dredging survey, so it’s impossible to compare them, he said. The final post-dredging survey has not been delivered, although he has asked Mocciae for it, as has the Harbor Management Commission, he said.

He has complained to Sue Jacobson of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), he said.

“Sue Jacobson is getting so disgusted with it she is basically saying, ‘Well, that’s a city problem. You people got to work it out.’ Well how are you going to work it out with someone who won’t even give you the drawings?” he said.

Mocciae said the post-dredging survey will be done by the end of next week. It’s mandatory: the state wants a survey within 90 days of the end of the dredging, he said.

Shellfish Commissioner Jonathan Maggio said people should not use the boat ramps.

“I did hear someone dropped a trailer, it actually fell off the end of the ramp,” he said. “They were fortunate. They were able to get it off with a tow truck.”

There is an “end of ramp” sign at the park now. Norwalk Police marine officer Pete Lapak said maybe a new sign needs to go up.

Not in the commission’s purview, members said.

Commissioner Patrick Davito said technically it is. If a car goes into the water, there would be a gasoline spill, he said.

Mocciae said the end of the ramp sign is serious – don’t go past that point, he said.

“When you get to ‘end of ramp’ that is the end of ramp. You’re not supposed to go any further,” he said.

People who don’t follow the directions lose their trailer, he said.

“That’s happening more and more because you know what? The tides are changing,” he said.

“Lower-lower, higher-higher,” Petrini said.

“They go off the end,” Mocciae said. “As they’re pulling their trailer back up they’re pulling boards up. It’s getting worse and worse. Once you can’t Band-Aid it anymore, that’s a problem. You’ve got to put a barricade in front of the ramp and say you can’t get out until another two hours. That’s a problem. We’ve been doing that for the last two years, on tides.”

Fear not, he said — all in good time.

“We have a good plan,” he said. “The dredging has been done. … Everything going in a logical direction for us to be finished in two years.”