From CTPost:  STRATFORD — Imagine a box 66 yards long, wide and tall. Fill it full of sand. Now move that box 33 miles up the coastline.

That's essentially what will happen this fall and winter when the biggest dredging project the Housatonic River has seen in more than 40 years is scheduled to start.

The project will take nearly 300,000 cubic yards of clean, fine sand from the Housatonic’s shallow navigation channel and move it to Connecticut’s premier beachfront park, Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison. A cubic yard of sand weighs nearly three tons, in case you’re wondering.

It’s a win-win for everyone,” said William Rock, a member of the Stratford Waterfront and Harbor Management Commission and chairman of its dredge committee. “Clean sand for beach replenishment is getting hard to find these days, and this will really improve the beach up at Hammonasset.”

It's the first major dredging of the Housatonic since 1976. The last dredging of the Housatonic was in November 2012 when the Corps'dredge Currituck removed about 50,000 yards of shoal material. But that was classified a “maintenance dredge,” and only removed sand and silt that had been deposited during storms occurring the years prior, particularly Hurricane Irene in August 2011.

“We’re pleased that the Connecticut Port Authority has followed through with the finding for this project,” Rock said. “A we also have an agreement to have Milan Bull, senior director of science and conservation of the Connecticut Audubon Society, to monitor the beach for plovers.

Bull, in a telephone interview, said that timing of the project shouldn’t affect shorebird nesting sites. “It should be completed by March, which is just about the time the piping plovers and the least terns arrive,” he said.

The dredging will restore most of the authorized depth and width of the channel from the mouth of the Housatonic between Milford and Stratford to about five miles upstream to the Valley. More than 1,000 vessels are based in the river and harbor, including approximately 15 commercial vessels. Marina operators in the area say that they have had to come of the aid of pleasure craft skippers who ran aground.

This time, the sand will be transported by barge to re-nourish the eroding beach at Hammonasset. There, the sand will be pumped onto the beach and moved around by bulldozers. Officials say the eastern end of the two-mile-long Hammonasset beach needs the most replenishment.

Hammonassett, Connecticut’s most popular state park, attracts 1 million visitors a year.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New England District, awarded the $9.3 million contract to Cashman Dredging and Marine Contracting Company of Quincy, Mass.

The work will be performed over a three to four months between Oct. 1 and Jan. 31, 2018, for shoals inside Milford Point, and between Oct. 1 and Feb. 28 for shoals seaward of Milford Point.

In Stratford there are seven marinas with a total of 714 slips; Milford has three marina and 246 slips and Shelton also has three marinas with 188 slips. There are 87 harbor moorings and 18 residential docks along the river, according to Corps documents.

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