b'C H A P T E R T E NIt was soon evident that the boat yard owners would not have easy sailing on the project. Opposed forces lined up.Among them, a hefty number of shellfishermen for whom the river was prime hunting territory; dredging would be a big hit on their livelihood. FCW took a lively interest, too. The Stage Harbor Management Plan had just gone into effect (in August 1994), and one of its stipulations held that the river, inScott Tappans words, was designated as a low-impact shellfish resource, not as a mooring field for large boats. As a matter of fact, threats to the rivers oyster reserves had been why dredging ended in 1971. Existent oyster grants had rock-solid priority.All in all, whether to re-dredge in the Nineties posed formidable questions. For example, was this going to be new dredging or maintenance dredging? Recalls Tappan, The town had conveniently forgotten that this was not maintenance dredging (but) new dredging. But there were no records anywhere.They were missing. Knowing that the state had done the digging in 71, he wrote to the appropriate state office. They sent him the 1971 blueprints, and he saw that the proposed project represented new work.That, says Scott Tappan, meant years and years of Army Corps of Engineers permitting and a lot of money.Meanwhile, Friends of Chatham Waterways, heeding its mission statement, was keeping a close eye on a process that spanned three years of effort. Its emissary was director Everett Eddie Yeaw, another Yeaw with almost a centurys line of progenitors in the community. He was assigned to monitor the Waterways Committee meetings and report back to the FCW board.To Eddie Yeaw, Chathams waterways and the Oyster River in particular were thoroughly familiar territories. A summer resident in Chatham since 1926 and a year-rounder since 1992, he had been a customer of the Chatham Yacht Basin since the Eighties; that was where he fueled his 20-foot Sea Craft, went for repairs, and stored the outboard off-season. From personal experience, he knew that, come summer, Oyster River had more boats threading up and down it than any other Chatham anchorage. Very often, he says, boats would be drifting right across the channel; its been that way for years. Yeaw also was well aware that this waterway was a major source of income for a lot of clammers. Dredging would surely nibble away at their bread-and-butter crop.Unlike some people, Tappan remembers, Eddie made the Waterways Committee meetings. I always felt he was almost as much a member as any of us. He (didnt) vote.But he showed up. And Yeaw took notes, to recap sessions for the FCW board. People on the committee could not fail to know how he saw things.As Scott Tappan put it, once Yeaw got rolling, he was a passionate man.183'