The St. Mary’s County Commissioners are seeking monies to improve navigation into what is the only harbor of refuge between the Potomac and Patuxent rivers. The commissioners on Tuesday approved an application seeking $77,500 from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Waterway Improvement Fund to dredge 700 feet of the St. Jerome’s Creek channel in Dameron.
Director of Public Works and Transportation George Erichsen told the commissioners the dredging would only be a temporary fix, as indicated by the fact that the same channel was dredged just three years ago. The more permanent fix would be to repair the two jetties around which the shoaling is occurring.
The county expects to hear whether an Army Corps of Engineers project for the jetties is approved next year. Part of that project is locating and identifying a sunken ship that may also be exacerbating the shoaling. When Commissioner Todd Morgan (R: 4th) asked whether that ship might be historic, Erichsen said that was an unknown until the ship is located.
Commissioner President Francis “Jack” Russell (D), who is a waterman, said, “If we don’t move this project along there will be a lot of shipwrecks that will be easy to identify.”
Neither the dredging nor the Army Corps of Engineers jetty project will involve any county money although some staff time may be required. Zane Rettstatt is the project engineer for the dredging [project.
