Page 33: of Marine News Magazine (January 2025)

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Feature

Domestic Dredging

The use of bene? cial dredging material for tasks such as Harbor Post 45 Deepening project to restore Crab island building and coastal restoration is growing. Industry Bank. Crab Bank is a bird sanctuary located in the estimates put the use of dredged material at 30% of volume Charleston Harbor near the shoreline of the Old today, but the USACE wants to increase it to as much as Village in Mount Pleasant. Bene? cially using material 70% by 2030. De? ned more speci? cally, reusing dredged from the deepened channel restored 32 acres of prime material excavated from the sea? oor, river and lake bottoms nesting grounds, giving shorebirds and seabirds is known as bene? cial use of dredged material. Such uses much-needed habitat for increasing their populations include rebuilding barrier islands, ? sh and wildlife habitat this spring and those to follow.

creation and restoration, beach nourishment, land? ll cover, • Maryland – Chesapeake Bay: A pair of vanishing human recreation and land site remediation. islands off the coast of Dorchester County, Md., are to

Bene? cial use of dredged material in a harbor can have be restored using dredged sediment. The U.S. Army a signi? cant impact on improving the condition of the Corps of Engineers (USACE) Supplemental FY 2022 harbor while also alleviating existing demand for devel- Workplan allocates $37.5 million in funding that opment and use of new disposal sites. In FY23, 66% of guarantees construction of the Mid-Chesapeake Bay the overall federal dredging program totaling 107 proj- Island Ecosystem Restoration project. The project will ects incorporated the use of dredged material for bene? - use dredged material to restore island habitat at James cial purposes, compared to 59% in 87 projects in FY22. and Barren islands and help protect the Dorchester

And, while myriad projects have had a signi? cant positive County shoreline from erosion. The project began in impact on local environments, a few speci? c projects are September 2022 and the island sites will eventually worth highlighting: replace Poplar Island in Talbot County as the state’s primary receiving site for bay channel dredged sediment. • Buffalo River Dredging Restoring Wetland Habitat: The larger of the two, James Island, will have 2,072 The contractor is Cheboygan, Michigan based Ryba acres restored, with 55% preserved as wetlands Marine Construction Company. With the retaining habitat and 45% as upland habitat. At Barren Island, wall in place, dredge material is being bene? cially 72 acres will be restored as wetlands and the project reused to ? ll the old commercial slip near Wilkenson will also include the installation of breakwaters to Pointe. This reuse of dredged material will transform protect island remnants and adjacent seagrass beds.

the site into a wetland, restoring it to an aquatic habitat.

• Florida: Pinellas County is planning a full Dredging: nourishment of Pass-a-Grille beach that will be a key component of the Intermodal Equation performed in phases. During the ? rst phase, between The domestic waterfront, ? nally sitting at the grownup’s 5,000 and 10,000 cubic yards of sand from the Grand table in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s intermo- Canal project was placed between 1st Avenue and 6th dal discussion, is poised to both grow exponentially, and Avenue.To fully nourish and restore Pass-a-Grille take the domestic economy with it, when it does. That’s Beach, the County sought and received authorization because the highways, trains and airports that span the from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to place an fruited plain, coast-to-coast, are all but impotent without additional 140,000 cubic yards of sand from Pass-a- a secure and streamlined connection to our coastal ports, Grille Inlet between 1st Avenue and 22nd Avenue. inland rivers and Great Lakes.

This phase is divided into two sections. In the ? rst The collective waterfront represents the cleanest, and section, sand will be placed from 1st Avenue to 9th most ef? cient way to move cargo and people known to Avenue. For the second section, sand will be placed man. But none of that is possible without the dredging from 10th Avenue to 22nd Avenue. industry. Helping to spread the word, and herd the legisla- • South Carolina: Here, dredgers are reusing the tive cats, is DCA’s Bill Doyle. And, you’d have to dig pretty excavated dredged material from the Charleston deep to ? nd a better choice for the job.