Mystic River Press • 7/31/2013
MYSTIC — Two new visitors to Mystic were bicycling down Isham Street one day last week, and as the man and woman rounded the corner to Bay Street, the woman came to a stop.
“Such a beautiful harbor!” she exclaimed as she found herself face-to-face with the S/V Mystic and smaller sailboats dotting the Mystic River.
The river is indeed beautiful at this time of year, but a beast lurks just upriver from this postcard perfect scene. A crumbling barge has been slowly deteriorating for the past 50 years at water’s edge behind Twister’s Ice Cream Shop (formerly Kitchen Little) on Greenmanville Avenue.
The decaying process has gone from slow to rapid over the past three years, perhaps accelerated by high winds and tides from Tropical Storm Irene, Superstorm Sandy and last February’s blizzard.
When Stonington based Clean Up Sound and Harbors joined forces with Clean the Bay and Save the Bay to clear debris from the river last summer, timbers from the barge were discovered far upstream and downstream from its current location.
The barge has become an eyesore, a safety issue, with its loose timbers and exposed metal spikes, and a hazard to navigation.
“The pieces break off and float around in the river, and I get a phone call that there’s a big timber that is submerged and drifting,” said Mystic Harbormaster Paul Watts. “It’s a dangerous situation.”
Attempts were made to find out who was responsible, but the barge seems to be in no man’s land.
Some say it was placed there by a Greenmanville Avenue property owner to break the impact of rising water during a storm, but no one is certain.
“It’s been an orphan; no one wants to claim it,” said CUSH President Fran Hoffman.
Watts recalls the barge was “kind of a tourist attraction.”
“I’ve been here for 45 years, and it was old when I got here,” Watts said. “We think it was an old coal barge, nobody really knows. People would stop to look at it and walk on it, but it is really falling apart now.”
CUSH felt the best way to solve the problem was to lead an effort to assemble a coalition to remove the remains of the barge. The coalition includes CUSH, Watts, representatives from the town of Stonington and Mystic Harbor Commission, Bill Botchis (owner of the abutting property) and Docko, Inc., of Mystic.
Docko, a specialist in residential and commercial marine design and construction, prepared the permit application pro-bono to the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP), which Hoffman and Watts co-signed and submitted in June.
Hoffman said CT DEEP and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the application within two weeks.
The estimated project cost is $12,000 to $13,000. Clean up is a delicate process; the DEEP permit only allows work to take place between October and April.
“Removal of any large objects, or sometimes putting in docks, are bound by DEEP rules,” Watts said. “A lot of it has to do with the spawning of fish and eel grass and regulations they have for time constraints.”
Work will include cutting away much of the material above the water with chain saws, but removal from the water line to the mud line requires the use of a barge and crane. A large metal winch rests in the middle of the debris and will also be removed by crane.
Regulations also require that nothing be disturbed below the sediment line.
“It is expensive; you can’t get around it,” Watts said.
CUSH contributed $750 for the required survey and plot plan for the permit. Stonington waived its tipping fees for disposal of the material, Botchis will contribute $1,000 and Hoffman said there’s hope the Harbor Commission will also make a contribution.
That leaves the coalition short by $9,000 to $10,000.
CUSH has started a “Boot the Barge” fundraising campaign as a way for boaters and other interested parties to donate what they can.
“This could be important to anyone who owns a dock or marina; they don’t want these timbers floating around,” Hoffman said. “We also want to appeal to businesses and residences along the Groton and Stonington sides of the river.”
Donations can be made by sending a check payable to “CUSH” with “Boot the Barge” in the memo line to CUSH, P.O. Box 883, Stonington, CT 06378 or by clicking on the button below and donating online.
“Even if everybody would throw in a few bucks, it could add up,” Watts said. “If we get a little bit here and there, hopefully we’ll come up with the money, and we will never see the thing again.
