Gator Dredging Wins Another Cape Coral Contract

The City of Cape Coral Florida has again contracted with Gator Dredging to survey some of the city’s canals and create a management plan for dredging.

This latest contract covers the northwest quadrant of the city. In 2012 Cape Coral contracted Gator Dredging to survey the city’s southeast quadrant and in 2014 it surveyed the southwest quadrant. After both surveys Cape Coral hired Gator Dredging to perform the dredging.

The city has not contracted for any dredging in the northwest quadrant yet. “They need to evaluate our surveys” said Jacob Sheets assistant sales and marketing manager for Gator Dredging’s Cape Coral office.

Cape Coral claims more than 400 miles of canals more than any other city in the world. As part of its survey Gator Dredging gives each canal a letter grade A – D in order to prioritize those canals most in need of dredging. In the previous surveys canals with a C or D grade meaning their depths were less than -4 feet MLW were put on a priority list. The acceptable canal depth is -5 feet MLW.

In 2012 Gator Dredging contracted with the City of Cape Coral in Florida to dredge the city’s canals using an eight-inch Ellicott swinging ladder dredge the Swinging Dragon and other equipment. It worked in the southwest quadrant of the city’s canals.

In addition to grading the canals Gator Dredging sorted them into large medium and small projects. The large projects involving the removal of more than 1200 cubic yards of material each were done with an eight-inch Ellicott swinging ladder dredge (the Swinging Dragon). A six-inch hydraulic dredge pump mounted on a barge with a hydraulically operated boom was used on the medium projects. For small projects involving the removal of less than 150 cubic yards of material Gator Dredging used either a four-inch or six-inch hydraulic submersible dredge pump.

In 2012 and 2013 Gator Dredging removed 47000 cubic yards of sediment from canals in the city’s southeast quadrant and completed an estimated three years’ worth of work in two years. In the southwest quadrant it removed 81000 cubic yards of material.

The dredged material was pumped through a four-inch flexible hose to dewatering cells on vacant lots that Gator Dredging had identified in the survey for each project.