Vision forming below bay’s surface

A CLEAN WAY: Clean Bays Executive Director Kent Dresser cruises around Bold Point in East Providence, where the group will remove two sunken barges thanks to an $87,000 state grant. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
A CLEAN WAY: Clean Bays Executive Director Kent Dresser cruises around Bold Point in East Providence, where the group will remove two sunken barges thanks to an $87,000 state grant. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

Just beneath the scenic surface of Narragansett Bay lies a murkier side of Rhode Island’s maritime legacy.
Sunken barges, broken pilings, abandoned yachts and the debris from centuries of violent storms dot the coastline, some poking through the water at low tide, others obscured behind cattails or layers of mud, says Clean Bays Executive Director Kent Dresser.
“I can’t quantify it, because every time I look I find more,” Dresser said about the extent of coastal debris. “If you sail or drive along the water it looks clean and beautiful, just grass, rocks and sand. But if you nose up to the beach and walk a little way into the weeds, you can see long stretches of debris left over from high tides, hurricanes and nor’easters.”
Removing this detritus, large and small, has become a driving quest for Dresser, a licensed captain with years of experience in marine salvage and towing whose primary job is president of Confident Captain/Ocean Pros marine-training school in Middletown.
Dresser founded Clean Bays, originally named Clean the Bay, in 2005 as a nonprofit dedicated to improving the waterways that sustain his business.
Fortunately, Dresser’s goal of removing unsightly and potentially dangerous wreckage from coastal waters is shared by state officials who have been increasing efforts in recent years to clean up Narragansett Bay.
In 2012, the General Assembly established an additional charge ranging from $2 to $20 on boat registrations to finance wreck- and hazard-removal projects.
Controlled by the Derelict and Abandoned Vessel and Obstruction Removal Commission, this fund is being tapped for the first time this fall in an $87,000 grant to East Providence for the removal of two abandoned barges off of Bold Point.
The barges, one very large one and a smaller one, have been sitting amid the broken pilings of Greenjacket Shoals for decades and are rumored to have been involved with the construction of the nearby Washington Bridge. (East Providence’s grant application lists a total of three barges and six ships sitting on the bottom at Greenjacket Shoals, but lists the origins and dates of abandonment as unknown, except for the steamer Mount Hope, which sunk in 1938.)
With plenty of experience extricating debris from the mud, Dresser’s team was hired by East Providence for the barge-removal job earlier this month.
It won’t be easy.
The location of the barges in shallow water means they can’t be accessed from land or by using heavy-lifting equipment on large vessels with deep drafts.
Sitting right across the water from Providence’s India Point Park and a short dinghy ride from downtown and acres of land the state is trying to develop, the Greenjacket Shoals barges are obvious targets for cleanup.
When researchers from the University of Rhode Island’s oceanography school scanned the shoal with a high-definition sonar array, they told Dresser the images of wreckage that came back looked like “pickup sticks.”
Even if it is at a smaller scale than in East Providence, Dresser said wreckage and debris affect most corners of the bay.
While industrial abandonment may be the most significant issue in the upper bay, further south homeowners and boaters are often the culprits.
During the recession, a wave of recreational-vessel abandonment spread nationwide as boaters feeling the financial pinch became unable to sell or afford maintenance.
While that problem has moderated, the flow of debris from land hasn’t.
Dresser said a large amount of the garbage that washes up on the shoreline comes from the random items homeowners place in or around the water, from temporary docks and floats to small boats, furniture and even decorations.
When a big storm comes, like Superstorm Sandy, the items that have not been well-secured are washed into and up the bay, coming to rest in marshes, estuaries and other sensitive habitats. As it harms wildlife and degrades the waterfront environment, marine wreckage also presents navigational hazards, especially to small, recreational watercraft.
“The debris is outside the shipping lane, but smaller sailing vessels, fishing boats, kayaks [and] rowing shells do navigate in shallow waters and are impeded by debris,” Dresser said.
Like abandoned boats, old derelict pilings are a problem on the urban shoreline and Clean Bays has developed a system involving an underwater chainsaw attached to a boat that cuts old pilings off at the base.
As decrepit as they seem when they come out of the mud, old vessels and pilings do have some residual value.
Old lumber that can be salvaged from the wrecks is prized as an interior building material. For this past summer’s pilings project CleanBays partnered with a Maine lumber company that turned reclaimed logs into flooring.
Dresser said some of the wood within the barges should be even better.
“Some of the test lumber, after being milled, is beautiful,” Dresser said. “It would make excellent wood for an interior construction project and has a great story to go with it.”
Right next to the two barges being removed using the DEM grant is a third barge that Dresser hopes to find additional funding to remove after the first two.
Once all the barges are gone, Dresser said the 14-mile East Providence shoreline alone has five years of wreckage to clean up, and then there is the whole rest of the bay.
In between removal projects, Clean Bays is working on creating a map of the bay’s wreckage to help inform future cleanups.
In the past, Dresser has relied on charitable donations to fund its work, but the Derelict and Abandoned Vessel fund opens up a new avenue for getting these projects done.
“The big stuff is moving forward, but we need to develop a strategy, budget and funding sources to perpetually keep shorelines debris free,” Dresser said. •

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