St. Paul Engineer District Awards Contracts For Fountain City Service Base Work

The St. Paul Engineer District recently awarded a $10.2 million contract to Newt Marine Service, Dubuque, Iowa, for mooring dolphin replacement and an $18.6 million contract to Kraemer North America, Plain, Wis., for the design and build of a straight-line mooring solution at the district’s Fountain City (Wis.) Service Base in Upper Mississippi River Pool 5A.

The service base serves as the mooring point for the district’s fleet during months when the river is closed due to ice. It is also the home base for the district’s heavy equipment, such as cranes, bulldozers and excavators, used to maintain the district’s locks and dams and floating plant.

“The project is a very important opportunity to modernize and upgrade our Fountain City Service Base with safer and more efficient infrastructure,” said Rob Maroney, the Corps’ project manager. “We have used this facility for the construction, repair and maintenance of our vessels and equipment for more than a century now.”

The Fountain City Service Base Sustainment and Modernization Project is a two-phase project to improve the function and safety throughout the service base. The two objectives of the project are to replace the deteriorated mooring dolphins on the west side of the Fountain City harbor channel and modernize the service base.

Phase 1 of this project includes replacing severely deteriorated mooring dolphins on the west side of the Fountain City harbor channel. This phase of the project utilized an AE firm for design of a new mooring system to replace the existing wood mooring dolphins on the west side of the entrance to the Fountain City Bay. The schedule calls for completion of Phase 1 by September 2022.