Posted on June 21, 2016
By Paul Czapkowicz
Approximately 919,000 cubic yards of material have been removed as part of an Indiana Harbor and Canal dredging project that began in 2012.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the East Chicago Waterway Management District shared that information during a meeting last week to update residents on the project.
Mike Nguyen, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said dredging for the 2016 fiscal year is expected to begin in August.
“For this year, we’re actually planning to dredge 150,000 cubic yards of federal material and 20,000 cubic yards of non-federal, private material,” Nguyen said.
He said federal material is that which is found in a federal channel the government is authorized to maintain. Taking contaminated material out of it allows barge traffic to navigate through to conduct business.
“If we don’t get rid of it, some of that contamination will actually go into Lake Michigan,” Nguyen said. “And then that’s our drinking water.”
Nguyen said 40 years’ worth of sedimentation and industrial deposits had accumulated in the harbor and canal because no dredging occurred there between 1972 and 2012.
A contract was awarded in September 2011 to a joint venture of the Kokosing Construction Co., Inc. and O’Brien & Gere to do the dredging and operate a confined disposal facility.
That facility is located just west of the Indianapolis Boulevard bridge and takes in material that is gathered through mechanical dredging and then placed in sealed hoppers.
Stan Neff, operations manager for Kokosing, provided information regarding environmental monitoring that occurs at the confined disposal facility, including four air monitoring stations present there.
He said it will take all of August and part of September to remove the 170,000 cubic yards of material.
“Some or all of the time, we’ll be working two shifts, 24 hours a day,” Neff said.
The contract with Kokosing and O’Brien & Gere expires Sept. 30.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is expected to advertise soon for contractors to bid on a new five-year contract.
Source: nwitimes
