Debris dredged in Newport Harbor to be used in renovation at Port of Long Beach

The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to next open the projects to bids in March.

“This is a mutually beneficial project,” Chris Miller, Newport Beach’s public works manager, said. “The city has a need to dispose and the port has a need to fill a slip.”

What the city does have to meet, though, is a specific quantity of material within a limited timeframe, Miller said. “Our six-month window starts in May, so we are hustling really fast.”

Miller said the city has contributed $10 million toward the dredging project, which will cost $22 million.

This is the third time in a decade the Port of Long Beach has stepped up to take sediment and debris from Newport Harbor.

In 2011, the port took sediment from the dredging of the Rhine Channel, a project that Miller also oversaw. In that case, he said, it was a city project because the channel being dredged was not under federal jurisdiction.

In 2012, the Army Corps of Engineers dredged a portion of the harbor’s channels, Miller said, but ran out of funds and disposal options. In that case, the port took the sediment to fill a slip, but could not accommodate all that would have been dug up, he said.

This time, the amount of sediment and debris the port can take is larger because it will go into a huge slip that once fit some of the port’s largest container ships. They could carry up to 20,000 containers and be 1,300 feet long.

The project to fill the slip is part of a larger renovation to an outer harbor container terminal, said Sean Gamette, managing director of engineering for the Port of Long Beach.

The terminal is divided into halves by the south slip. The last piece of the project is to fill the 40-foot-deep slip, he said, and to connect the two halves of the terminal with a new wharf. Once the slip is filled in – it will also get 1.8 million cubic yards of sediment dredged from the port’s harbor in coordination with the Army Corps of Engineers – it will become part of the terminal, from wharf to container yard.

Once the fill project is completed, in addition to providing more space to stack containers, the renovations will facilitate more efficient cargo movement equipment, as cargo handlers and trucks will no longer have to go around the slip, Gamette said.

“It’s mutually beneficial and gets to the heart of how ports and harbors in Southern California operate,” he said. “It gives an option for the Army Corps of Engineers for disposing dredged sediment along our coast, which is very important. With the agreement, we’re able to match need with need.”

Once the contract to dredge is underway in Newport Harbor, barges will transport the excavated sediment to the port. They then travel into the fill site and “open like a clam” dropping the sediment into the slip, Gamette said.

The additional fill will come from dredging in the port to deepen and widen the channels to make it easier for the large ships to navigate.

“We’re doing it so the large ships can move in and out under any weather condition, he said.

Shana Conselman, president of Friends of Newport Harbor, was ecstatic when the port commission agreed to the plan earlier this week.

“It brings me great joy that the city of Newport Beach was willing to listen to voices of the residents, citizens and those who use and enjoy Newport Bay,” she said. “Thankfully, the material will provide much-needed fill to help accommodate the expansion plans for the largest and greenest port in the world.”

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