Chancery denies request filed by the Sierra Club
A Tuesday, Nov. 29, ruling from Delaware’s Court of Chancery appears to have rejuvenated state efforts to complete a long sought-after dredging of the Assawoman Canal.
The canal, roughly 4 miles in length, runs south-southeast from the Indian River Bay to the Little Assawoman Bay, past Ocean View, Bethany Beach and South Bethany.
The canal has silted in considerably since the state last commissioned a (partial) dredging, in the 1950s.
As local Sen. George Howard Bunting (21st District) has pointed out, the state went to considerable effort and expense to increase clearances under the canal bridges (back in the 1980s) because they expected people in medium-sized boats would be motoring through the canal.
And many local anglers have expressed their desire to fulfill that expectation. According to plans, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) will dredge the canal to a depth of 3 feet, at mean low tide.
On the other side of the aisle, many recreational boaters (especially canoeists and kayakers) consider it a haven set right at the heart of an increasingly busy and populous area. The canal has reverted to a semi-natural appearance (although it’s arrow-straight), with an overhanging canopy of tree branches.
But attorneys representing members of the Sierra Club suffered a major setback when Chancellor William Chandler denied their request for a temporary restraining order (TRO), and a preliminary and permanent injunction on the project, on Nov. 29.
Chandler will eventually issue a formal opinion, but in the meantime gave attorneys on both sides advanced warning that he would be ruling in favor of DNREC, because he’d found the Sierra Club failed to demonstrate the threat of irreparable injury.
It may bring to a close an appeals process that began last year, when DNREC withdrew its own dredging permit, and then reissued. At the culmination of that Sierra Club appeal, the state’s own Environmental Appeals Board issued an opinion directing DNREC to conduct a new cost-benefit analysis for the project.
However, the Delaware General Assembly overruled that opinion with “epilogue language” in the fiscal 2006 Bond Bill (signed by Gov. Ruth Ann Minner on July 1).
That action prompted this, the Sierra Club’s most recent petition, for the TRO and preliminary injunction.
DNREC officials had agreed to stand by until Chandler issued his decision on the matter, but as of Nov. 29, they have the green light.
Whether any actual dredging will take place this year is doubtful, because DNREC has work to do at the spoils site first, and dredging must be performed between September and the end of December.
DNREC officials estimated the project would take between two and three years to complete.