The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded the first contract, worth $47 million, of the Charleston Harbor Post 45 Deepening Project to Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company.
The first of two contracts for the deepening of the Charleston Harbor Entrance Channel has been awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has award the first
construction contract for the Charleston Harbor Post 45 Deepening Project at
the Port of Charleston.
The contract, worth $47 million, was awarded to Great Lakes
Dredge and Dock Company for work in the Entrance Channel. The contract
specifically lists new work and maintance dredging of six million cubic yards
of material from the Entrance Channel to reach a depth of 54 feet. The dreding will allow vessels of up to 14,000 TEUs to enter the harbor without difficulty.
The dredged
material will be placed in the Ocean Dredged Material Disposal Site offshore,
said the USACE.
The USACE predicts that hopper dredges will be utilized for
construction, which is
required to be completed by spring 2020. Due to the presence of threatened and
endangered species, hopper dredge operations are restricted to an environmental
dredging window, generally from December to March each year, the USACE explained.
“We’re very excited
to have awarded the first contract for dredging that will start deepening
Charleston Harbor,” said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Palazzini, district commander. “The
Charleston District team has been diligently working on this locally-,
regionally- and nationally-important project with the South Carolina Ports
Authority since well-before I took command, so I’m proud to see their hard work
come to fruition.”
The second contract for the project may be awarded before the end of 2017, said the USACE. The entire project will take between 40 and 76 months, as construction is dependent on full-funding,
dredge availability, weather and a variety of other factors.
A timeline for the dredging of
the upper and lower harbors, for which funding was first allocated in 2012, has not yet been finalized, as the USACE has also approved several other waterway improvement projects.