New Canaan May Sell Dredged Material

New Canaan may have scooped more than gook out of two town ponds during much-needed dredges in 2008 and 2010.

Though it wasn’t planned, what came out of Mill and Mead Ponds during those dredges—organic material now kept in the southeast section of Waveny Park—could be sold on to a company seeking to mix it for topsoil use, officials say.

Composed in large part of leaves, the material is organic and could be augmented with sand or other organics to form a kind of topsoil, according to Tiger Mann, New Canaan’s assistant director of the Department of Public Works and senior engineer.

“We don’t have the capability of screening and augmenting it, but the material is sitting there drying out and we theoretically could sell it and get some money for it,” Mann told Patch.

The Park Commission during its last regular meeting gave Mann and DPW the green light to explore the possibility.

Right now, the material is kept—as per a Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection-approved plan—in a laydown area known as “the cornfield.” The area is tucked in Waveny’s woods, east of the main trail that runs alongside the pond at the bottom of the sledding hill.

It isn’t clear how much money is in the dredged material.

“It’s not going to sell for $30 a yard, because that’s what processed soil is selling for going out the back end,” Mann said. “They [a prospective buyer] would have to dig it, haul it, augment it and process it.”

The town could do nothing and let the material sit in the cornfield, or remove it and bring the cornfield back to its original height, Mann said.

“And then we could use that money—either put it back in the General Fund for other projects or use it to beautify that area with plantings,” he said.

Other Waveny-related news:

• Collapsed Kiosk at Waveny to be Removed
• Natural Gas Plan for New Canaan Progresses
• Roaming Dogs Lost & Found; Leashless Dogs’ Owners Warned & Fined