Dredging Roundup – North America

Port Clinton Dredging Ahead of Schedule
The summer dredging along 7000 linear feet of channel in the East Harbor of Lake Erie at Danbury Township Ohio is ahead of schedule according to Bob Cumbow deputy chief of operations for Ohio State Parks.

Cumbow said that he is very satisfied with his automated DSC dredge that the state bought in 2000.

“It was one of the first with an onboard PLC [computer] system which I guess is an industry standard now” he said. It’s equipped with a 10-inch pump and both a ladder swing and conventional swing.

The dredge first made a 30-foot-wide channel in some sections of the harbor because the water was too low earlier in the summer. After the water rose the dredge returned to widen the channel to 100 feet.

The channel serves boaters at the private marinas along East Harbor road and also the state dock at East Harbor State Park.

$10 Million Beach Replenishment For Rockaway Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and New York city officials announced at an August 4 press conference that the Corps of Engineers awarded a $10 million contract to restore about 600000 cubic yards of sand along Rockaway Beach.

Schumer had been pushing the project for months. This work is being funded by a measure to restore damage from Hurricane Sandy and is being executed via two separate contracts one for about $10 million and another for $26.4 million both won by Weeks Marine of Cranford New Jersey. The first contract for the movement of about 600000 cubic yards of sand was won earlier this summer.

Together both contracts will involve the placement of more than 3.5 million cubic yards of sand stretching from the 19th Street to 149th Street beaches. When finished the beach will have been restored to its original design parameters of the 1970s.

While the restoration has obvious recreational benefits the main purpose is to provide a buffer to reduce inshore impacts from coastal storms.

Oysters Moved For Tappan Zee Dredging
Elsewhere in New York dredging is ongoing around the new Tappan Zee Bridge that crosses the Hudson River—part of a $3.1 billion contract to replace the bridge. The dredging will remove just under a million (951000) cubic yards of material—less than the 1.9 million cubic yards originally planned.

The work is being done by Tappan Zee Constructors LLC a partnership of several companies including Weeks Marine which is handling the dredging. The dredging will prepare the river bottom to support cranes and other equipment used in building the bridge.

The dredged material will used in remediation projects in New Jersey. The dredging began in August and will continue 24/7 for about three months. The dredging must take place between August 1 and November 1 to allow endangered sturgeon to spawn. The work will be monitored by up to 25 federally approved sturgeon observers.

Before dredging began the team spent about $100000 to move colonies of oysters from the Hudson River near the dredge site to a new location a mile south toward Manhattan.

“We don’t want those oysters taken away with the dredging material that’s going to be disposed of” special advisor Brian Coneybeare told the New York Daily News. He said the oysters’ presence is encouraging because they actually clean and filter the water.

Queens Dredging Aims To Reduce Flooding
Residents of Springfield Gardens in Queens New York saw the beginning this August of a project to dredge Springfield Lake and create a new drainage system to relieve floods in the low-lying section of Queens.

The work is part of a $70 million plan to alleviate flooding part of an overall $170 million plan to improve the city’s infrastructure.

Sediment has changed the once seven-footdeep lake to only a foot deep in places. Nearby residents regularly suffer flooded basements after storms since the Jamaica Water Supply Company closed 70 groundwater wells in 1996 raising the water table.

More than 170000 cubic yards of material will be pumped with an underwater pump to minimize disruption to the lake’s populations of turtles white perch and silverside.

Genesee River Dredging Complete
Officials in Rochester New York celebrated the completion August 20 of a $1.5 million project to dredge sediment from the Genesee River to ease navigation. For the first time in more than two years the cargo ship Stephen B. Roman will dock at the Port of Rochester during a ceremony Monday. The ship’s owner had been using smaller boats because of sediment buildup.

More than 200000 cubic yards of material was dredged from the Genesee River.

Cashman Awarded Contract
On July 26 the Corps of Engineers awarded Cashman Dredging & Marine Contracting Company a $4227400 contract for maintenance dredging on the New York and New Jersey Harbor and adjacent channels.

The project which will be managed by the New York Engineer District is scheduled to begin September and end in December.

The project will remove about 475000 cubic yards of material from New York Harbor and place it at the Historic Area Remediation Site located 21 nautical miles from the project site.

Clarkston Lewiston Dredging Delayed
The ports of Clarkston Washington and Lewiston Idaho—the most inland port on the West Coast—have not been dredged since 2006. Both were looking forward to having their channels dredged this winter between December and February when dredging must occur to minimize disturbance to salmon and steelhead. But the Walla Walla Engineer District said July 26 that expected dredging would be delayed until next year due to “complexities” of the environmental permitting process. That means dredging can’t occur until next winter.

The proposed dredging would move 3000 cubic yards of material from the port of Lewiston 10000 cubic yards from Clarkson and about 407000 cubic yards from the shipping channel near the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers. The material would be used to create habitat for young salmon and steelhead near Knoxway Canyon.

Though the amount of dredging is small by the standards of some ports it has drawn intense opposition from environmentalists who want to decommission and dismantle the four dams along the Snake River to protect spawning salmon.

After Delays Passaic River Dredging Starts
After several delays due to a malfunctioning bridge the remedial dredging of the Passaic River near Lyndhurst New Jersey began in early August. To accommodate the work 11 bridges on the Hackensack and Passaic rivers must be opened six nights per week and 10 must open once a day.

The Passaic River is part of the Diamond Shamrock Superfund cleanup site under the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency under whom the Lower Passaic River Study Area Cooperating Parties Group (CPG) a partnership of 69 companies assists in the cleanup.

Cashman Dredging has been performing the dredging having done trials as early as 2007 using an eight-cubic-yard CableArm environmental clamshell-style bucket outfitted with a pressure transducer to maintain the proper bucket depth tolerance.

Mississippi To Get $10 Million For Dredging
Jackson County Mississippi officials learned August 2 that they were getting $10 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to dredge bayous and waterways damaged by Hurricane Isaac in 2012. With state and county matches the money available for dredging will come to about $14 million.

That’s enough to bring 14 waterways in the county back to navigable depths. Board of Supervisors president Mike Mangum told local media permits have not been issued yet.

The county usually budgets between $400000 and $500000 for dredging in any given year. “This is more than we could do in 10 years” of a regular budget said County Supervisor Troy Ross.

Long Island Town Chooses Dredging Option
The five-member board of the Long Island town of East Hampton voted unanimously on September 10 to choose the most ambitious of three options presented by the Corps of Engineers for addressing safety and navigation issues in Montauk Harbor inlet.

The option will involve dredging installing groins and replenishing a nearby beach with 230000 cubic yards of sand. The navigation channel will be dredged to a 17-foot depth from its present 12-foot depth in an eight-year cycle to produce 50000 cubic yards a year which will be placed within 1200 feet of the jetties.

The cost of all the work will total about $40 million of which the town will contribute about $1.5 million.