A long-awaited project to dredge a channel that feeds Sengekontacket Pond is set to go this spring, now that Oak Bluffs has awarded a bid for project.

This week the town agreed to pay the International Golf Company a base fee of $300,000 to remove an estimated 6,300 cubic yards of sediment from under the Little Bridge on Beach Road. The town will pay most of that bill with disaster aid awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of its Hurricane Sandy response.

Sediment has been piling up at the Little Bridge channel ever since the storm hit two and a half years ago. Over time, a sandy beach formed there, blocking the exchange of water between the salt pond and the ocean.

With a contractor now in place, dredging can begin at the site on June 1 to restore that flow and improve water quality in the pond.

Engineering consultant CLE Engineering reviewed bids on behalf of the town this week, and recommended that the town go with International Golf. The other bid was submitted by Coastal Marine Construction of Canton, and came in much higher, at $433,524.

Town administrator Robert L. Whritenour said the winning bidder will collaborate with Dale McClure of Watercourse Construction and the R.M. Packer Company, both of Vineyard Haven.

“We are very, very happy . . . that this company is comprised of a partnership of local contractors,” Mr. Whritenour said at a selectmen’s meeting this week.

Last December, FEMA awarded the town $289,000 for the project. The town will contribute an additional $89,000.

Those funds will allow contractors to remove sand down to five feet below mean low water, not quite to the depth of the rock casing that lines the channel at eight feet below mean low water. That means the town will have to dredge periodically in the future to maintain the inlet as sand continues to pile up under the bridge.

“With the monies we have from FEMA, we are doing as much as we possibly can,” said selectman Gregory A. Coogan.

Once the sediment is removed from the channel, the town will store the material at the dredging site or at the town highway garage, Mr. Whritenour said. Next spring, the town plans to use the sand to replenish the sediment at Inkwell Beach, a town beach near the Steamship Authority terminal which has eroded in recent years.

In an earlier round of bids, which came back a year ago, contractors said they could do the same dredging job for $325,000 to $390,000. The town waited to do the work until the federal funding came through, and pursued local bidders.

“It was good that we waited and went back out locally,” said Mr. Coogan.