Congressman Joe Courtney, D-Second District, announced Monday that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied a request earlier in the day to hear an appeal in the lawsuit by the State of New York that challenged the establishment of the Eastern Long Island Sound dredged material disposal site.

The 1.3-mile underwater site, between the mouth of the Thames River and Fishers Island, was designated by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2016 and viewed as crucial to maritime businesses like Electric Boat and Cross Sound Ferry, along with the Naval Submarine Base. A host of industries depend on periodic dredging of area channels, marinas, boatyards and harbors.

But the use of the site was blocked in 2017, when New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation and secretary of the state sued the EPA, claiming the dredge site would harm the Sound’s ecosystem and interfere with navigation.

“This is the outcome we’ve been waiting for to protect southeastern Connecticut’s maritime economy and the Long Island Sound region,” Courtney said. “The eastern Long Island Sound site was designated after painstaking work by federal, state, and local stakeholders to come up with sensible ways to safely manage dredged materials in the Long Island Sound. The prolonged legal fight over this issue has only created uncertainty for our ports, harbors, marinas, and our region’s submarine industrial base.”