"Nothing Ever Happens" DeCosta Slams Inaction On Pond Dredging

Former Select Board member, scalloper, and charter boat captain Bobby DeCosta made an impassioned plea to the current Select Board Wednesday night, calling out the town for what he described as a lack of action on a long-standing request to dredge the culvert at First Bridge in Madaket to assist herring getting into Long Pond from the Madaket Ditch.

“I get so frustrated by this shit,” DeCosta said. “This is exactly what happens with all this stuff: we study, we study, we talk, we bullshit, and nothing ever happens. This has been six years. It’s time for this to get done.”

DeCosta said the culvert at First Bridge has silted in, preventing herring from getting into the pond to spawn. The project is simple, he said, should be easily permitted, and funding could come from the payment Vineyard Wind provided to the town in exchange for not objecting to the undersea cable that will run past Muskeget.

“I’ve never heard the can kicked down the road so hard in my entire life,” DeCosta said emphatically. “This is not that difficult. I’m so sick and tired about hearing how difficult this is. A guy with a backhoe could fix this in one day.”

Town officials, including Natural Resources Director Jeff Carlson, said they didn’t necessarily disagree with DeCosta. But they argued that the project is more complicated than simply digging out the culvert, with multiple state agencies and permitting involved. It also is connected to a larger project outlined in the town’s Coastal Resilience Plan that would raise Madaket Road at first and second bridges to deal with coastal flooding risk, and resize the culverts or create a low bridge.

“We’re trying to get a project for this area that addresses the ditch, the culverts and the road, all synched together to minimize the impacts to those areas and minimize the mobilization costs to the town,” Carlson said.

Vince Murphy, the town’s coastal resilience coordinator, said there were other factors to consider as well.

“We know with sea level rise we know there’s going to be significant changes,” Murphy said. “We also have to consider the neighbors in that area. There’s significant landowners in that area and if we make significant changes to the culverts we have to work with them in order to not impact their lands or cause unnecessary or unintended flooding so the engineering of those culverts will have to be a significant factor in this.”

But other current and former Select Board members - including Matt Fee and Rick Atherton - both agreed with DeCosta that the issue should have been addressed long ago.

“My concern is that this happens in Bobby’s lifetime, and by the look of him he might not last much longer after tonight,” Fee said with a laugh. “I think we're making this a lot bigger than it has to be. Those ditches have been dug and taken care of for 200 years, we’ve had votes of the Massachusetts legislature allowing it.”

In a memo to town officials sent prior to Wednesday’s meeting, Carlson further outlined what he sees as the complexities of the project.

”We need to first understand the flow rates that will need to flow through the larger culvert/bridge at Madaket ditch. Once we know those flow rates and the increased flow rates over time as sea level rises, that will then serve as the guide to the dredging depth and volume that will need to flow through the Madaket Ditch for the next several decades, with the appropriately sized culverts in place,” Carlson stated in a memo. “Not undertaking this action first may cause excess water to build on either Madaket Ditch side of the Long Pond side if undersized or excessive flow with channel and bank scouring if oversized.”

A motion to have Carlson update the board again within a month, while setting a goal to have the project completed before next spring, was passed unanimously on a 4-0 vote. DeCosta pledged to work with any and all parties to make it happen.

Watch the full discussion below: