Cove To Corps:
Don’t Budge The Sludge

“I don’t want to eat an oyster growing on top of a toxic pile. They’re going to glow and be big mothers, and I don’t mean mother of pearl.”

So said Cove Street resident Linda Pinsky in reference to one of the proposed benefits of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plan to drop a quarter-million cubic yards of contaminated dredged yuck from Bridgeport Harbor into Morris Cove.

Her voice joined a confrontational chorus of more than 100 neighbors who gathered for the second and likely last public hearing on the matter at the Nathan Hale School Monday night to blast the Corp’s plan and to question its science.

At issue were two ideas for for what to do with sludge, some of it toxic and carcinogenic, to be dredged from Bridgeport Harbor.

One plan calls for creating two confined aquatic disposal cells, called ​“CADs,” in Bridgeport Harbor. One of those cells would destroy a 50-acre oyster fishery.

A second plan calls for just one CAD in Bridgeport and the transport of about 250,000 cubic yards of sludge that includes carcinogenic PCBs and other toxins to be deposited in an already existing 30-foot deep pit near the breakwater in Morris Cove, some 700 to 1,100 feet from shore. Click here to read the Corps’s summary.

New oysters beds would eventually grow there. That’s one of the benefits, explained Thomas Fredette (pictured), a Corps biologist ​‚and project manager Michael Keegan.

Pinsky and the audience weren’t buying.

A year ago, at the first public hearing in town, Morris Covers said: Keep it in Bridgeport. At Monday’s hearing, they reiterated the suggestion, at times coarsely.

In the interim, the opposition has been joined by the entire New Haven Board of Aldermen and the entire state legislative delegation, led by State Rep, Robert Megna, who wrote letters urging the Army Corps of Engineers to look elsewhere than New Haven.

At Monday’s meeting, mayoral Chief of Staff Sean Matteson said he will draft a letter in opposition this week. ​“I don’t get a sense they’re looking at other locations,” said Matteson.

Keegan has insisted over the past year that other locations were researched, including the Housatonic River and places in Stratford. Bridgeport and New Haven emerged as the Corps’ top choices.

A petition running to 200 signatures was circulated by area organizers Kevin Butterbaugh and Claudia Bosch (pictured) and Ben Northrup (not in photo) as people entered the meeting. It is to be presented Tuesday morning to U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro requesting her to oppose the plan.

The stay-in-Bridgeport plan costs about $52 million; the Morris Cove plan some $5 million less because the ​“borrow pit” already exists. About 75 percent of the funding is federal, with a state and local contribution also required.

The Corps’ Keegan and Fredette said they want to find the ​“most cost effective and environmentally” appropriate approach.

They outlined the benefits as increasing oyster habitat in the area by approximately 22 acres, increasing the oxygen level in parts of the affected area that occasionally goes anoxic, or oxygen-dead; and the lower cost.

The hazards include potential spillage of the contaminants during the dumping and potential infiltration of the contaminated water into waterside basements. While they could not promise, the officials said their experience made them think none of this would occur.

Dr. Rahmner v. Dr. Fredette

Yale Medical School’s Christoph Rahner, who lives in Morris Cove, questioned both points.

After Fredette’s PowerPoint presentation showed an image of potentially contaminated water around the pit not having the ​“energy” to flow up an underwater hill and into basements, Rahner (with raised hand) pointed out that the protective ​“hill” would play no role in infiltration.

“We are all missing the hill, so we would see a pendulum, [contaminated water] going in and with every tidal change.”

Conceding the point Fredette said, ​“That’s one possibility. I’m not a ground water engineer.”

The absence of absolute certainty in the Corps’s responses elicited occasional disruptive calls: ​“You grow tomatoes there, and you eat them.”

And ​“Where do you live? You want it in your back yard?”

The most anxiety centered on the claim that the potential risk regarding PCB levels in the contaminated soil, far higher than currently exist in Morris Cove, would be imported with the Bridgeport yuck.

Ben Northrup pointed out if only 1 percent of the 250,000 cubic yards is dispersed in the dumping, that’s 2,500 yards of particles that might affect people where they fish, kayak, and swim.

Fredette said that PCBs tend to stick in the sediment, not in the water where people would be.

Rahner explained of PCBs ​“These substances are so toxic that even two or three parts per billion are toxic to your body. Tom’s [Fredette] chemistry is correct, but they are soluble [too]. They invade and stay in the fat of your body.”

He quoted a Columbia University study this summer concluding that the real danger long term is that ​“these accumulate and cause cancer and also damage fetal development. So it’s not us but our children and grand children. And that’s a strong impact we can’t accept.”

That prompted Gloria Bellacicco, who lives a block from the water and regularly gets water in her basement, to ask: ​“Are you people going to be liable when we start to get sick in the Cove!?”

Fredette said he has not read the study. He cautioned that bits of information on both sides could be taken out of context.

Keegan said the next step is to assemble all the feedback and make an environmental assessment. The Corps then needs a water quality certification from the state Department of Environmental Protection and a local sponsor, such as Bridgeport’s port authority, to sign on for the locally funded portion.

“We have to assess [what was said tonight],” Keegan said. ​“You don’t shift gears just based on public opinion. There’s opposition to every civil construction project.”

He said his next step is to assess and if necessary modify the report and make it public, but not in another hearing. ​“We could have hearings for ten years.”

The hearings end the feasibility phase. Funding is in hand, he said, but only for the next phase: plans and specifications, such as making engineering borings. That should take much of 2011, he added.

Stay tuned. The Corps’ plan is viewable at its site.