With boats running aground, shallow waters near Buttermilk Bay will be dredged, beginning next week.

“Honestly, we’ve even bumped bottom,” said Garry Buckminster, Wareham harbormaster. “There’s moving sandbars out there that fill in the channel to the south.”

The area to be dredged stretches from just south of Route 6 to the Cape Cod Canal. Work on the $552,650 Army Corp of Engineers project will begin around Dec. 9.

Financially, “it will not impact us locally,” Buckminster said.

“The work consists of dredging approximately 20,000 cubic yards of predominantly sandy sediment by mechanical dredge from the Buttermilk Bay 6-foot and 7-foot navigation channels,” said Project Manager Craig Martin of the Corps of Engineers’ New England District, Programs and Project Management Division.

The maintenance will be completed by Bumham Associates Inc. The project’s projected completion is prior to Jan. 14, 2014, “as not to disrupt natural resources.”

The last time the channel was dredged was in 1984. The channel is 100 feet wide, about one mile in length.

The sandy dredged material will be transported by dump scow approximately three miles south to a near-shore dredge material placement site just south of Mashnee Dike in Phinney’s Harbor in Bourne.

The dredging should not having any impact on boat traffic given the lack of traffic this time of year, according to Bourne Harbormaster Tim Mullen.

“We know where to go, and where not to go in the channel,” Mullen said, refering to the currently driving through the shallow waters. “You cannot get two boats abreast through the channel at low tide without one hitting bottom.”