Projects aid navigation, prevent erosion on Smith Island

Rhodes Point regularly takes a beating from storms that move up the Chesapeake Bay, and normal coastline erosion has taken its toll over the years. Both have left the Smith Island village especially vulnerable to high tides and storm surges.

Now two new projects designed to rebuild part of the shoreline and aid navigation at the west-facing community will be getting underway this fall.

“It’s been a big problem,” said Eddie Somers, president of Smith Island United, a group that helped develop a new vision plan for the island. “We’ll take all of it.”

Last year, Somerset County officials built 12 stone structures on the west side of a small barrier island that protects Rhodes Point from the open bay, and four more will be built this fall, said Gary Pusey, the county’s planning director.

The 150-foot-long structures are designed to create a living shoreline once sand washes behind them and grasses can be planted there, he said. 

Somerset County is using about $4.5 million out of a $17 million federal grant that was awarded for Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts to pay for the project, Pusey said.

The work there seems to be doing its job already. Rhodes Point resident Maxine Landon said she used to be able to look out her living room window and see the open bay across the barrier island, but now she can’t.

“I have seen a big difference,” she said.

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The county also will chip in some of the Hurricane Sandy money as its share of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project for a jetty at Sheep Pen Gut near the stabilized shoreline. 

The project will involve the realignment and hydraulic dredging of the federal channel and the construction of two jetties to help prevent the channel from filling in again, said Sarah Gross, a spokeswoman at the Corps of Engineers’ Baltimore District office.

The jetties will be built on either side of the gut. One will be 1,150 long and the other, 650 feet. Both will be 50 feet wide at the base and 6 feet at the crest, Gross said.

Landon said the dredging work is badly needed because watermen have trouble getting through the gut, and several have damaged their boats trying to navigate the shoals.

“It’s washed in so bad, it’s coming into Rhodes Point and filling in the basin,” she said. 

The water is so shallow at times that watermen must travel an hour out of their way to avoid the problem area, wasting their time and fuel, Landon said.

"People living on Smith Island rely on channels for transportation to schools and the delivery of critical goods and services; the water supports their livelihoods," said Col. Ed Chamberlayne, Baltimore District commander. "Severe erosion and shoaling have caused watermen to have to take inconvenient routes around Smith Island, increasing travel time and fuel costs. This project increases navigational clearance, so boaters don't run aground due to shoaling, and it provides boaters from Rhodes Point and Tylerton with more direct access to the Chesapeake Bay."

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South of Sheep Pen Gut, the Corps of Enginers also will build a stone sill along 850 feet of shoreline to prevent further erosion and use some of the clean dredge material to fill in behind it, offering wetland restoration and protection. Native vegetation will be planted on the dredged material behind the stone sill to restore or enhance about five acres of wetlands. 

Additionally, approximately 10 acres of existing wetlands south of the federal channel behind the newly-restored acres will be protected.

The total project construction cost will be around $9 million. The Corps of Engineers  will cover 90 percent with federal money and the remaining 10 percent coming from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Somerset County. 

A contract for the project is expected to be awarded by Sept. 30, with construction starting in November, Gross said. The work will take about eight months to complete.

The work to protect the island follows on the heels of a plan that sets goals for the survival of Smith Island, including boosting tourism and sustaining the watermen’s culture. The plan became an amendment to Somerset County’s comprehensive plan last year.

Twitter: @LizHolland5