CRITICS of the success of dredging work to clear Watchet's multi-million pound marina of mud were warned to hold their fire this week. A week-long operation carried out by Dutch company Van Ood to remove the build-up of silt in the leisure facility ended on Tuesday. But within hours concern was being expressed about the level of mud still remaining. Local coastguard Nick Tapp told the annual town meeting mud could still be seen under the boats. And he said there were real fears for the safety of people using the marina. "If someone fell off one of the pontoons at night, nobody would find them. "We get a lot of visitors here, spending their money in the town, but if we had an incident like the one at Burnham-on-Sea a few years ago when a little girl died, it would not do us any good at all." Mr Tapp said that in a recent training exercise one of the coastguard team had "gone in" to just six inches of mud: "And we really struggled to get him out." Mr Tapp claimed the depth of mud at the posts at the bottom of the slipway was around eight feet and suggested a warning sign should be put up to alert people to the potential danger. But marina operator Tim Taylor told the Free Press that people were being too quick to judge the success of the dredging and warned against negative comments. Mr Taylor admitted that the work had not been carried out at an ideal time because of the neap tides at the time and that he had been hoping Van Ood would extend their work to cover a further two tides. But he insisted that the operation had been "substantially successful". "We have removed thousands of tons of silt and have cleared all the navigation channels and 95 per cent of the berths," said Mr Taylor. "The area between 'pontoon A' and the East Quay does require further attention and we will be dealing with that using our own workboat, which operates a pump method and, when it is licensed, our barge. "That should only take about ten days to clear the mud from there and we will be doing the same between The Esplanade wall and the main walkway, where the dredger could not actually get in. "Yes, we have more work to do but after receiving the legal notice from West Somerset District Council informing us that we were in breach of our lease for not dredging, we were in a Catch 22 situation. "If we had not had that notice then we would have waited until well into May, as we had originally intended. "People are judging the work too quickly - the dredgers only finished on Tuesday. "People should have a bit of patience. All the boats are in at least a metre and a half of water at low tide. "This has cost us a fortune and I just wish that people would not be quite so negative. If anyone wants to come and talk to me about it, I would be more than happy to see them." Cllr Sally de Renzy-Martin, who is chairman of the Watchet Harbour Advisory Committee, said the committee had been alerting the district council to the problem of mud since at least the end of last summer. She said pressure had been put on the marina operator by the district council to "do something and do it fast". But she added: "It appears there is reason to believe that the dredging has not been as successful as one would have wished. "We will keep up the pressure on the marina and the district council to keep the mud down. "There is an awareness of the danger and it is becoming an increasing worry."
