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On April 26, a nearly 500-foot stretch of dock owned by top executives at Eastern Fisheries collapsed into the New Bedford harbor. It was the second such collapse in just six months — the first of which hospitalized two workers and has since caused significant challenges for some businesses operating at the port.
The sudden dock collapses have left waterfront business owners and city officials asking: what are the causes, who is responsible, and is it safe to operate heavy machinery on the busy but dilapidated northern wharf?
The city says the aging port needs an overhaul. It’s a challenging feat. Facing the costs, the Port Authority has sold some properties in recent years, transferring the burden of expensive repairs to the companies that use the infrastructure. But the patchwork of public and private properties along the northern wharf makes it difficult to carry out one comprehensive overhaul.
“This latest incident highlights the need for long-term solutions to aging infrastructure at different points in the port. Such solutions will require time and significant outside funding,” Gordon Carr, director of the New Bedford Port Authority, wrote in a statement to The Light. “The Port Authority continues to take its role in such an effort seriously and will support businesses and property owners in pursuing these solutions as we are able.”
The first collapse took place on Oct. 11, 2023. A section of bulkhead spanning about 200 feet by 40 feet was under renovation when it split from the rest of the pier and sank into the port. Four people fell into the water, two of whom were taken to the hospital for non life-threatening injuries. “It was very, very sudden,” Roy Enoksen, founder of New Bedford scallop company Eastern Fisheries, told The Light at the time.
In March, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Connecticut-based Mohawk Northeast Inc., which Eastern Fisheries had contracted to renovate the wharf. OSHA fined Mohawk Northeast over $214,000 for “willful” and “serious” workplace safety violations related to the collapse. That included failing to determine if the bulkhead “had the strength and structure integrity to support employees safely,” according to the OSHA citation.
Then, just one month after OSHA issued its citation, the second section of waterfront collapsed into the harbor. Both properties are owned by R.C.P. Realty, which lists Ronald Enoksen, president of Eastern Fisheries, as manager, property records show. Eastern Fisheries used the piers to dock its large fleet of scallop vessels. The company operated a processing plant on the parcel until it was torn down about two years ago due to concern about the bulkhead’s structural integrity.
“We were afraid of this happening, and it happened,” said Roy Enoksen. “We are going to do what we have to do to rebuild it, but it is a very expensive process.”
Until a few years ago, the city owned all three waterfront parcels between Hervey Tichon Avenue and Antonio Costa Avenue. But in 2018, looking at expensive and urgent repairs, the city sold two parcels, each just under 3 acres, to the real estate group acting on behalf of Eastern Fisheries, which previously held a 99-year lease with the city. Each sold for about $1 million.
The city, the New Bedford Port Authority and Eastern Fisheries have long known about the bulkhead’s deteriorating condition. The city contracted an inspection of the properties in 2018, which found the pier spanning all three properties to be in “poor condition” and that “some piles were observed to be completely deteriorated.”
Management of Eastern Fisheries wrote in its proposal to buy the properties that, although the bulkhead “is currently in a serious state of disrepair . . . Eastern and their related entities have the financial wherewithal to purchase, repair and maintain the properties in question.” Since then, Eastern Fisheries has contracted Mohawk Northeast to make the necessary repairs. But the bulkhead collapsed nonetheless.
Roy Enoksen, of Eastern Fisheries, said the renovations were delayed by environmental permitting hangups. “It was a serious setback,” he said. “We have been working on the permitting situation since we bought the property.”
The collapses have caused issues for other businesses operating on the northern wharf. The third parcel, straddled on each side by the two sections of collapsed bulkhead, is still owned by the city but leased to clam company Sea Watch International. Its fleet of six New Bedford clam vessels routinely offloads on the pier. Some of the vessels make up to two trips per week, unloading as much as 540,000 pounds of clams per trip.
The process requires heavy machinery, including a large crane and multiple forklifts, to move the steel cages full of clams from the boats to the company’s waterfront processing plant.
“It’s a lot of weight on that dock,” said Frank Cardoso, who operates the crane as an independent contractor for the Sea Watch fleet. The company briefly suspended its operations after the collapse. It has since leased a larger crane that can reach the boats without being stationed on the bulkhead. Offloading the vessels now takes an additional six hours, crew members said.
Carr wrote in a statement to The Light that the Port Authority has been in contact with the affected businesses and offered assistance with vessel storage and offloading. He said the company has so far been able to work around the issues, though safety remains a concern.
In an interview, Cardoso referenced a long, wide crack stretching along the bulkhead, running from the collapsed Eastern Fisheries dock through the Sea Watch property and to the now-collapsed dock on the other side. Over the last few years, Cardoso said, he has seen the crack grow from a small fracture to a foot-wide chasm splitting the bulkhead from the land.
“It seems pretty sound. We hope it is,” he said. “No one wants to find out what happens if it isn’t.”
Email Will Sennott at wsennott@newbedfordlight.org.
And yet, the NBPA is spending millions filling in commercial marinas and waterfront access to make way for new businesses. They should be taking care of their existing infrastructure and industries vital to the country’s #1 fishing industry. There is plenty of money to do both.
Fishing is on its way out in New Bedford, I don’t see any reason to pump more money into a zombie industry.
NBPA is not willing to help. When we asked for help rebuilding our dilapidated section because they owned it, they told us to stay off of it. We did the work and paid for it ourselves. Now they have decided to dredge our section for 3 weeks in our peak earning season and have shut the pier down. Way to work with the businesses that work the waterfront
I have been a commercial fisherman for some 35 years now and it’s incredible how the city of New Bedford, would never allow water front business to own any of the water front dockage and instead charged the fishing boat ownership docking fees, repair and maintenance fees and still these docks that are so important to the fishing fleet for off loading their catch, for repairs and maintenance of their vessels and for loading fishing gear, fuel, ice and groceries for a trip. Also for electric power boxes for various systems on a vessel. All of the fishing vessel owners have paid millions in dock fees to the city which should have been used for the upkeep of these docks and for rubber bumpers to prevent damage to the docks. How ever the docks have been rotting away from lack of maintenance and repairs, and now the city is selling water front dock property to business like eastern fisheries at an enormous cost and why? Because they didn’t want to spend the money that was intended for upkeep and repairs in the first place and now they want these companies that purchased the dock property to answer for the failures and collapse of the docks that the city knew full well were in bad shape because of the city’s neglect to maintain. Massachusetts and it’s city’s and township pay astronomical amounts of taxes to the state and New Bedford’s fishing fleet is the top revenue earner in the state and city. And now OSHA is penalizing the dock owners for the collapse of their docks, but never once pressured the city to make much needed repairs to the water front dockage in all the years they were the owners . The city sold their docks in bad condition for millions of dollars, and got away with making the repairs and now they’re charging penalties and fees to the business’s that purchased the docks and they’re selling the permits for the repairs to be made to the garbage docks they sold in the first place. How can a community like ours in new Bedford, as far as business owners like the ones who own and operate the huge revenue earning and also pay astronomical dividends of taxes to the city from the fishing fleet, when does the greed and the shady dealings end in this city, if it wasn’t for the fishing fleet in New Bedford there wouldn’t even be a city here. And keep letting the rental property owners raise the rents to out of the stratosphere prices and your going to have a homeless problem that you’re not going to be able to control.
What a sorry state of affairs for a port that generates $11 billion dollars in revenue a year. Shameful.