Currituck dredging deadline disputed

From the Raleigh News and Observer:

Former ferry chief expected to testify

RALEIGH - Jerry Gaskill, former head of the state ferry service, had to get a ferry operating from Currituck to Corolla by June 15, 2004, and federal prosecutors say he had employees dredge an illegal channel to meet that deadline.Gaskill, who oversaw the ferry service from 1993 until he was indicted in January, is charged with conspiring with employees to dredge the channel without the proper state and federal permits. Permit requests had been denied in the past because of the sensitive habitat nearby, prosecutors say.

"They knew when they were doing it, it was wrong," Assistant U.S. Attorney Banu Rangarajan told a jury Monday during her opening statement.

Gaskill, who denies wrongdoing, also is charged with lying to federal investigators and violating environmental laws. His trial might end as soon as Wednesday. He is expected to testify.

Prosecutors say that on May 6 and 7, 2004, seven ferry service employees used two boats to do "prop washing" or "kicking" -- using the boats' propellers to cut a channel in, in this case, Currituck Sound. The channel that was 6-feet-deep and 30 feet wide by 730 feet violated the Clean Water Act and another federal environmental law, prosecutors say.

The ferry was to carry passengers and schoolchildren to and from mainland Currituck to the remote town of Corolla on the northern Outer Banks. After the dredging was discovered, the state Department of Transportation agreed to fill in the channel. The ferry is not running at this time.

Gaskill's defense lawyer, Tommy Manning of Raleigh, told jurors that Gaskill had nothing to do with the dredging.

Manning disputed the idea that Gaskill was under any deadline pressure since on May 5, 2004 -- the day before the channel was illegally created -- Gaskill told the state transportation board that problems had delayed the ferry's start until August 2004.

Manning laid the blame for the dredging on one of Gaskill's underlings, Billy R. Moore, one of four state Department of Transportation employees who have pleaded guilty to federal charges. He is expected to testify. It was not Gaskill but Moore, the ferry service's dredging superintendent, who instructed his employees to create the channel, Manning said.

"You will not hear any evidence that Jerry Gaskill directed any of these men to do what happened," Manning said.

As state and federal officials questioned the illegal dredging, Manning says, Moore denied "prop washing" and kept telling Gaskill and others that his employees had only measured the depth of the water. Not until two months later did Moore admit to Gaskill what he had done and then implicated Gaskill when talking to investigators, Manning said.