Posted on February 25, 2026
A buildup of sediment around the confluence of the Christina and Delaware rivers is blocking fully loaded fruit ships from docking at the Port of Wilmington – a facility long known as the top banana port in North America.
In conversations with port workers as well as with state and federal officials, Spotlight Delaware has learned that over the previous month cargo ships bound for Delaware and carrying Chiquita Brands fruit have been sailing past the Port of Wilmington because the waterway leading to the Christina River facility has become too shallow.
The ships have been docking instead at ports in Chester and Philadelphia, where workers at those facilities have unloaded as much as a third of the vessels’ cargo, according to Port of Wilmington workers.
Then, with lighter loads and sitting higher in the water, the ships return to Port of Wilmington where they can navigate through the shallow Christina River to unload the rest of their cargo.
While the workaround has kept fruit moving, the situation could amount to a reputational setback for Delaware’s port. It comes at a time when the facility’s operator, Enstructure Inc., has been seeking out new lines of business amid an increasingly intense competition between regional ports.
The situation also means that the hours worked at the publicly owned, privately run Port of Wilmington are lower than what they would have been otherwise. And in some cases, those hours have been filled by non-union labor at upstream ports, sparking outcry from Delaware workers.
“Normally, we’ll work the ship around-the-clock for two days, or at least a day and a half. Now we’re lucky to get one around-the-clock,” Port of Wilmington union leader William Ashe Jr. said, referencing time spent unloading the Chiquita ships recently.
Ashe noted that the only ships impacted so far have been those carrying fruit from Chiquita, and not those bringing in perishables from Dole.
“They tell me that the draft is deeper on Chiquita than it is on Dole” ships, he said.
Spokespersons for Enstructure and for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – which is in charge of maintaining the navigable waters in the United States – each blamed the sediment buildup on delays in dredging that began last fall.
In an email, Army Corps spokesman Stephen Rochette said a dispute over an awarded dredging contract initially pushed back the start of the project.
“We awarded this contract in the fall and experienced a delay due to a contractual protest from another bidder. Additionally, the selected contractor had other project commitments as well that impacted their start time,” Rochette said.
The project was then hit by more delays last month when the United States Coast Guard prohibited dredging during a cold snap that caused ice flows to form along the Delaware River, Rochette said.
He said an expedited dredging operation is scheduled to begin imminently.
“Our contractor is mobilizing equipment and setting up the pipeline,” Rochette said in the email.
The Army Corps’ website lists the dredging contract for Wilmington Harbor as having been initially scheduled to begin last October. It was supposed to be complete next month.
It is one of 33 “maintenance dredging” projects within the Philadelphia region that are either proposed or ongoing.
The dredging delays at the Port of Wilmington have occurred just as the Army Corps has been suffering through a period of uncertainty. Similar delays in dredging have also recently been reported for projects in New York and in Michigan.
Also last fall, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget announced that the Army Corps would pause over $11 billion in low-priority projects within Democratic-leaning states, in response to the government shutdown at the time.
A subsequent Congressional statement indicated that one of those projects is in Delaware.
It is not immediately clear which Delaware project the statement was referencing as the complete list of paused contracts does not appear to be publicly available.
Former-New Castle County Council President Karen Hartly-Nagle was first to report on the Port of Wilmington dredging issues in an article published last week.
‘Raised so much stink’
The head of the Delaware office that oversees operations of the Port of Wilmington said tests of water depths conducted late last fall indicated that the channel leading to the Port of Wilmington “remained operational.”
In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, Brian Devine, the new interim executive director at the Diamond State Port Corporation, asserted that a rapid accumulation of sediment would have built up around Wilmington’s harbor near the end of last year
“While sediment accumulates in Wilmington Harbor throughout the year, significant weather events can result in periods of quicker accumulations,” Devine said.
Despite the explanation, Ashe insisted that dredging along the Christina River should have been complete long before the depth became an obstacle for ships — and before the rush of the winter fruit season. And while the Army Corps manages dredging, Ashe directed his criticism at state officials for what he said was their failure to press the issue.
“It should have been done in July,” he said. “Why would you wait until the winter months, knowing that you haven’t done any maintenance dredging in a year.”
Prior to the Port of Wilmington’s most recent dredging contract award, the Army Corps lists on its website a massive project posted in 2024 to dredge the Delaware River’s main navigation channel from Philadelphia to the sea.
That project’s documents also list dredging along the parallel “Wilmington Harbor, Christina River,” but it appears that the Army Corps separated that portion of the project, and re-awarded it last fall on its own.
Beyond Delaware port officials, Ashe has also criticized Chiquita’s actions in recent weeks.
When Chiquita diverted its first ship away from Delaware a month ago, he said the company violated a union agreement when its ship docked at a non-union Penn Terminals, near Chester.
In response, Ashe said attorneys from the his union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, successfully pushed Chiquita to move their next ship to docks at the Port of Philadelphia, which uses union labor.
“We raised so much stink, and we got lawyers involved,” he said.
Nevertheless, subsequent Chiquita ships have returned to Penn Terminals, according to Ashe and three other port workers.
Chiquita did not immediately respond to a request to comment on this story.
