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SYC Interim Update – Dredging of the black sludge

Thursday, 19th September 2019

Parks Victoria and Birdon (the dredging contractor) are doing an excellent job of removing the black sludge from the SYC Harbour. As of todays’ date, they have already removed several thousand cubic metres of the sludge from the pond area in front of SYC and around the Hampton pier. The work is ongoing. To ensure you understand the changes to the launching area, please immediately note the following;

  • The dredging work has created a crater like hole (as expected) which starts approximately 13m from the end of our OTB ramp. At the edge of the crater there is a drop off up to 1m deep. On the western side, we have marked the inside of our launching ramp and on the eastern side, we have marked the Hampton pier with orange reflectors (see below). When launching your boat, draw a hypothetical line between the markers and this will give you an approximate position for where the drop off is.

 

 

  • The 13 metres between the bottom of the OTB ramp and the crater comprises 8 metres of clean dark sand and then a further 5 metres of sand that still has surface sludge. The intention is to remove this surface sludge by scraping it back to hard surface. This will be done by a (land based) machine that will be brought into the Club in the next 2-3 weeks.
  • Thereafter we anticipate there will be a harder discoloured surface that will remain. Given the dredge has done as much as can be accessed from the water, options for dealing with the remaining material will be considered including pushing remaining material seaward, matting and or sand topping.
  • Whilst the main dredger machine has moved to the eastern side of the Hampton Jetty, the pipeline across our pond area remains in place for now.

As the remaining works progress we will keep you informed. This is a complex project and we are very grateful to Parks Victoria for their efforts.

 

 

Richard Hewett
Chief Executive