Residents With Boats Aground Await Mattituck Inlet Dredging

Local residents tired of having their boats run aground say they can't wait for the Mattituck Inlet to be dredged.

That includes Cindy Kaminsky of Long Island Sound Seafood, located along the inlet, who said that one of her 42-foot boats with a 4-foot draw has run aground.

"We've been in this location since the mid-1960s," she said. "There have always been problems with the inlet. My husband [Jim Kaminsky] and I have a seafood packing business and he's a commercial fisherman. We're right on the mouth of the inlet. The situation has been escalating this year."

But though the Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to dredge the inlet during the winter of 2011, the Kaminskys don't feel it will fully solve the problem.

"It's not a full maintenance dredge," she said, 'but just at the mouth, to replenish the sand the (Bailie Beach) has lost. We will benefit from that–for a while. But I know there isn't a full dredge scheduled."

Mrs. Kaminsky said that the inlet has been dredged, going back 45 years, first in 1965, 1980, 1990, and lastly in 2004.

"But even right after they did it in '04 there were problems," she said. "We had a boat that literally turned over on its side when it ran aground."

Christopher Gardner, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said that the upcoming dredge will not be a full maintenance dredge either.

"About 90,000 cubic yards will be taken out of the channel," he said. "It will take about three months, but it's still waiting on federal funding for the budget to be approved."

Gardner said that the budget, which includes such projects usually gets approved by August.

"But I think this year it won't be done until after this election," he said.

Ron McGreevy, who lives on the Long Island Sound on the east side of the inlet, had his own take on Army Corps funding.

"The Corps always has funds," he said. "But they wait until Congress specifically grants money for a certain dredge."

McGreevy founded the Southold Sound Mattituck Inlet Preservation League after discovering Section 111 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1968, which states that if any damage is done to an Army Corps project, the Corps is obligated to correct it.

McGreevy and his wife Doris have lived by the inlet for 30 years. She pointed out that the beach nesting grounds for the piping plover have been eroded.

"The erosion is constant, it never stops," McGreevy said. "The Army Corps of Engineers put jetties at the mouth of the inlet back in 1906, and they extended those jetties afterward. Eventually, according to the records I researched, 700 feet of beach was gained on the western side, and 400 was lost on the east. The west side can't any bigger. Now the sand just pours around the jetty and goes out along the coast."

The McGreevys built a bulkhead for their property round 1993.

"At high tide now there is only about 20 to 30 feet of beach," he said.