$5.2 Million Approved for Washington Island Channel Dredging

The channel between Washington Island and the Door Peninsula will likely be deeper and wider next year, thanks to a motion passed on Tuesday, April 30 by the Joint Finance Committee.

The motion was a request from state assembly representative Garey Bies and state senator Frank Lasee asking that $5.2 million from the Harbor Assistance Program be given to dredging the channel.

Roen Salvage crews working on the Potato Dock on Washington Island. Photo by Dick Purinton.

The project would deepen the channel by two feet and widen it by 20 feet, making ferry crossing easier and passage through the channel safer for big ships. Work could begin after Labor Day and completed in 2014.

“I’m very aware of Washington Island’s situation and how a little more evaporation [in the Great Lakes] could literally cause a dire situation for Washington Island, could come close to shutting the island down,” Bies said. “It would really affect the economy of Door County and Washington Island.”

Recent low lake levels have troubled the Washington Island Ferry Line, forcing it to use the island’s Potato Dock instead of the Detroit Harbor.

“That channel has not been dredged for [at least] 50 years,” said environmental program manager Ken Potrykus. “Surprisingly not much accumulation of sediment has occurred over that time frame. The majority of the work is associated with not maintaining the channel but deepening and widening the channel.”

The federally maintained channel was first dredged in 1939 by the Army Corps of Engineers, and hasn’t been dredged since.

“The state is doing the work of the Corps of Engineers, who dug this [channel] back over 80 years ago,” said Washington Island Ferry Line President Hoyt Purinton. “The good part is that it’s 99.9 percent intact. Lake levels have permanently, it appears, dropped, so what was good 80 years ago is not viable.”

The $5.2 million isn’t quite a done deal – it still has to be passed by the legislature as part of the total budget and signed by Governor Scott Walker.

“I’m pretty confident it’s going to come through both houses without any tinkering with it and the governor will sign the budget with that provision in there,” Bies said.

The grant would supply 80 percent of project funding, and the remaining 20 percent would be funded in-kind by the town by supplying landfill space for the dredged material.

The Town of Washington applied for a similar dredging grant last year and was turned down because the project needed more study. In October, the town received around $200,000 from the Harbor Assistance Program for an engineering study to finalize the project, determine its cost and make it more eligible for future funding.

Although neither Potrykus nor town chairman Joel Gunnlaugsson could say whether the dredging would be enough to keep the ferry running safely in the future, they said the project puts the town on the right track.

“Based on the current levels and what the short predictions are from the Army Corps of Engineers, we feel this is a very good starting point to get to where we need to go for the operating of the ferries,” Gunnlaugsson said.