Delays resulting from the Covid-19 lockdown have

added £125,000 to the costs of the £6.9m Peel marina dredging project.

Minutes of project board meetings have been released following a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Infrastructure.

Dredging using a long-reach excavator began on the site on April 27 after it was shut down during to the Covid lockdown at the end of March.

A board meeting on May 7 was advised that good progress had been made with 2,200 cubic metres of silt removed in nine days.

Senior project manager Jeremy Reece noted that the impact of the four-week delay had cost the project about £125,000.

A meeting the following month confirmed that between 7,100-7,600 cubic metres of silt had been dredged and it was estimated that 12,800 cubic metres would be removed by contractors Laws by the end of June.

Infrastructure Minister Tim Baker asked if it was possible to extend the project into early July, a one-month extension to the end of June having already been granted.

This had been an option discussed with the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture.

DEFA’s director of environment Karen McHarg told the board meeting the department had already been flexible.

She queried whether another 1,000 cubic metres was going to make a significant difference.

The plan is to dredge the remaining 17,000 cubic metres of silt from the marina next spring.

June’s project board meeting had been told Colas would submit an application within the next two to three weeks.

However, Colas has yet to submit a planning application to store the potentially contaminated silt at the old Turkeylands quarry.

The plan had been to empty the temporary lagoon at the end of November ready to take silt from the second phase of the dredging in spring.

Mr Reece outlined the increasing risk that the Turkeylands facility will not be ready in time, given Colas’s delay in submitting its planning application.

Contingency plans should be considered, the board meeting was told.

One option, given that the lagoon is only about 60% full, was to have a smaller dredge next year - but this would cost an extra £150-£200,000.

A feasibility study is being carried out into future options to deal with the build up of contaminated silt.

This will include the possibility of ’canalising’ the marina or working in the river catchment area to reduce contamination at source.

Mr Reece told the project board meeting in May: ’It is likely that some material will continue to arrive in the marina every year, so we are going to have to dredge that.

’If we work up in the catchment area and that silt when it arrives will have a lot lower heavy metal content, then it can go out to sea.’