Posted on October 11, 2016
By John Gallagher, IHS
A long-awaited dredging and port construction project aimed at making the Port of Boston more competitive for container and bulk cargo is scheduled to finally start moving in the fourth quarter of 2016.
Illinois-based Great Lakes Dredge & Dock was awarded on 30 September a USD12.8 million contract that will require the company to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for roughly a year building a confined aquatic disposal (CAD) cell, in which to dispose maintenance dredging material from the Boston harbour.
The dredging is scheduled to begin in late December, the US Army Corps of Engineers confirmed to IHS Fairplay, and will restore the port’s inner harbour to 12.2 m (40 feet). It is considered the first phase of a much larger project, in the works since 2002 and estimated at USD350 million, to deepen Boston’s main shipping channel down to as much as 15.5 m (51 ft).
The deepening will allow the port’s Conley container terminal to accommodate the 14,000 teu vessels that have started moving through the Panama Canal, which was expanded earlier this year. Conley is owned and operated by the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), which runs the Port of Boston.
“Our mission to revitalise the port and keep it competitive is a huge undertaking,” said Massport CEO Thomas Glynn at an event held at the port on 22 September.
In addition to helping to boost container business, the CAD cell and inner harbour dredging will also help ensure tankers and bulkers carrying imports of home heating oil, salt, jet fuel for Boston’s Logan airport, and automobiles can continue to get to terminals on the adjacent Chelsea and Mystic Rivers, the port said.
Landside expansion plans are in the works as well. Massport recently received approximately USD150 million in state and federal grants for renovating the container terminal, which includes building a new berth and purchasing three new gantry cranes.
The current two-berth facility is dredged to 13.7 m (45 ft). The new cranes would give the terminal nine ship-to-shore cranes, the newest having the ability to reach across the decks of wider post-Panamax ships.
To accommodate those vessels, however, the port’s main channel must be deep enough to at least match the depth at Conley. The channel deepening project calls for removing close to 765,000 m3 (1 million cubic yards) of rock and 7.8 million m3 of ordinary dredged material.
Massport announced in September that the Conley terminal set new records for fiscal year (FY) and monthly container volume2. The terminal handled 247,329 teu in FY 2016, a 12% increase over the FY 2015, and 26,334 teu in August, a record month.
Source: IHS
