Posted on May 4, 2017
By Doug Ferrar, delmarvanow
The semiannual Assateague Bypass dredging of the Ocean City Inlet continues this month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Monday.
The dredge Murden arrived in Ocean City on April 28 from its home port in North Carolina and commenced operations on April 29, said Chris Gardner, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District.
Murden is scheduled to work in the area for about a month. It will remove material from in and around the inlet channel, with an emphasis on the ebb and flood shoals in which sand is traditionally trapped while naturally moving south toward Assateague Island.
Murden is expected to dredge the usual amount, roughly 35-40,000 cubic yards of material, during this bypass operation. It is anticipated that about 5-10,000 cubic yards of that material will be dredged from the navigation channel, Gardner said.
Based on the most recent surveys, efforts in the channel will focus on the area between buoys 11 and 12 and near the Coast Guard dock in the area of buoys 8 and 10, both of which are traditional shoaling hot spots, Gardner said.
Sand removed from the channel is usually placed south of the inlet, just offshore of Assateague Island.
The Assateague Bypass dredging is generally performed twice a year to assist with sediment movement across the inlet south to Assateague Island. The operation mitigates the impact of the inlet and its jetties, which causes the migrating sediment to settle in the inlet channel instead of continuing south to Assateague.
Source: delmarvanow
