SCARBOROUGH – Mike Walsh, the project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the Scarborough River dredging project, said this week that the contractor had failed to complete the work as scheduled.

Walsh said, however, that the work of dredging the mouth of the Scarborough River and the harbor at Pine Point would get finished this year, but the remaining work cannot now take place until the fall.

In mid-March, Walsh said that the contractor on the dredging project, North America Landscaping & Dredge Co., from Maryland, went to 24-hour operations in an attempt to finish the project by the April 1 deadline.

At that time both Walsh and Scarborough Harbormaster Dave Corbeau expressed their belief that the contractor would not get the job done on time, which has proved to be the case.

Walsh said this week that the main thing the commercial fishermen and recreational boaters in Scarborough need to know is that the dredge will happen, the details just need to get fully worked out first.

He said the contract for the dredging project was on a per-cubic-yard basis, so “I haven’t paid (the contractor) very much, and I have ample funds to complete the job this fall.”

The total contract was for $1.7 million and the contractor was hired to dig out an 8-foot-deep shipping channel at the mouth of the Scarborough River, as well as a 6-foot-deep anchorage area around the town pier at Pine Point. In all, the contract called for removing 114,300 cubic yards of sediment.

Walsh said that a survey crew from his office in Boston would be on site sometime this week to evaluate the work that was done by the contractor and to determine how much of the dredging there is left to do.

He said the contractor “is supposed to be packing up and leaving” in order to be out of the water and off the beach by the April 1 deadline.

– Kate Irish Collins

The dredging rig, pictured earlier this year on Ferry Beach, is set to resume work in the Scarborough River in the fall.