SCARBOROUGH – Concern that an ongoing fight with the federal government regarding the killing of an endangered piping plover might somehow delay a much-needed dredging project on the Scarborough River appears to have gone out to sea following a Dec. 13 press release from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

According to the release, posted to the corps’ New England District website, a $1.7 million contract to dredge the river was awarded on Dec. 2 to North American Landscaping and Dredge Co. Inc. of Ellicott City, Md. Work is slated to begin on Jan. 6 to dig out an 8-foot-deep shipping channel at the mouth of the river, between Pine Point and Prouts Neck, as well as a 6-foot-deep anchorage area around the town pier at Pine Point.

“The work consists of dredging about 114,300 cubic yards of sediment, including 1 foot of allowable over-depth,” said Project Manager Michael Walsh, of the corps’ New England District, Programs/Project Management Division in Concord, Mass. “The dredged material will be removed using a hydraulic dredge and pipeline. Disposal will be on the adjacent Western Beach as beneficial use material.”

The corps will manage the project, said Walsh, and all work will be done under the supervision of its quality assurance representative.

Material dug up from the river bottom will be used to create new sand dunes on Western Beach that could be adopted as habitat by the piping plover. According to Maine Audubon’s most recent annual report, a nesting pair of plovers has not been seen on Western Beach since 2010, while the last fledglings were observed in 2008. However, there was an uptick in activity following the last dredging project in 2005.

There was concern on the Town Council last summer when it seemed the dredging project might be imperiled by the July 15 killing of a plover by a dog on Pine Point Beach. An Aug. 20 letter from the Maine Field Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seemed to indicate that failure by the town to pass a stronger leash law could scuttle the deal.

“Our concurrence is based on the assumption that the town of Scarborough will revise their animal control ordinance and beach management ordinance to require that dogs be kept on a leash during the piping plover season,” read the third paragraph of the 24-page letter.

However, Mark McCollough, an endangered species biologist in the Maine Field Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said at the Sept. 4 Town Council meeting that Fish and Wildlife, while consulted on the dredging project, does not have the power to stop the Army Corps from its job. At most, his agency might “reopen talks” with the corps, he said, and possibly absolve it from responsibility for any future plover deaths that might occur on Western or Ferry beaches, once dunes there are rebuilt.

Town Manager Tom Hall has said the need for dredging has been on his radar since shortly after he was hired in 2009 when one of the first visitors to his office was Charlie Gray, a local fisherman who moored near Ferry Beach. Continued in-fill from tidal action had made it so that, at low tide, his boat was nearly landlocked, said Gray.

Although funding is limited to areas most affected by Hurricane Sandy, the combination of Sandy’s surge and perennial shoaling, allegedly caused by a stone jetty built in the 1950s, has been self-evident.

“It’s really dramatic,” said Hall. “At low tide you can walk from Pine Point Beach almost to the Prouts Neck Yacht Club. A lot of people do that and then have to scurry back quickly when the tide comes back in. It’s really an issue for navigation. It’s getting tougher and tougher to get a channel you can come and go from.”

Hall got on the phone almost immediately with the Army Corps, only to learn that while the corps had a new set of dredging plans, it did not have money to do the work. Then came Hurricane Sandy, on Oct. 31, 2012.

“On a hunch, or a lark really, I picked up the phone again when I saw media coverage of the Hurricane Sandy cleanup,” said Hall, who asked the corps to check if Scarborough might be eligible for funds under the $17 billion Disaster Relief Appropriations Act passed by Congress in Sandy’s wake.

“To our great surprise and delight, sure enough we did qualify,” he said.

In April, Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King issued a joint statement announcing that Scarborough had been approved for $3.5 million under the Supplemental Appropriations Act signed into law by President Obama in January.

The new sand dunes to be created on Western Beach also will form a berm to shield the Prouts Neck Country Club golf course from the sea. Last March, when the last of the previous dunes washed away, two holes at the course flooded.

According to Jim Fisher, president of Northeast Civil Solutions, hired a decade ago to help the Prouts Neck Association deal with beach erosion issues, erosion in the area of the country club can be blamed on a stone jetty built “with the best of intentions.” Created by the Army Corps in the late 1950s to act as a wave break, the jetty has actually accelerated erosion problems, said Fisher, last spring.

“Unfortunately, the people at the time didn’t understand the continued hydraulic action of the ocean,” he said. “It would have been very easy several years ago to be able to augment that dune with a series of engineered steps, but the laws of the state of Maine don’t allow that. Those laws are environmentally conscious and restrictive to the point where the association has been unable to maintain what was already there.”

“This project will undoubtedly benefit them,” said Hall, “but it also, frankly, makes it cheaper for us, because if the Army Corps does not have an easy, convenient place to deposit these soils they need to haul it out to an at-sea dump location. That means time and money.”