Posted on June 18, 2025
CLEVELAND — Dredging is underway along the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland.
“We’re dredging out 200,000 cubic yards of material,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Branch Chief Matt Snyder said. “To put that in perspective, 200,000 cubic yards would be taking a football field and filling it almost 90 feet tall.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing the project in Cleveland along with a New York-based contractor. Snyder said dredging plays a crucial economic role in the region.
“The dredging of the waterways is absolutely vital to the economy of Cleveland and the nation,” Snyder said. “We work closely with our partners to ensure that the waterway is kept safe, efficient and effective for commerce. Multi million dollars of commerce is run up and down this river every year.”
Dredging removes materials including clay, iron ore, limestone and salt from the depths of bodies of water. This ensures that the water is deep and wide enough for all ships to pass through.
“There’s many industrial users, commercial users of the river,” Port of Cleveland Chief of Engineering Matthew Wenham said. “They need that depth and width of the federal channel to be able to rely on and get to where they need to get on the river.”
The Port of Cleveland has two confined disposal facilities, which allows over half of the dredged material to be repurposed.
“We have a contract to have that exported, and it gets brought back into construction projects or used otherwise back into the community,” Wenham said.
David Emerman with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said there are several efforts across the state to ensure harmful dredged material doesn’t end up back in the environment.
“We have dredge recycling facilities in Cleveland that provide this as a product,” Emerman said. “We also have wetlands construction projects in Ashtabula and Sandusky harbor where we’re building wetlands and habitat out of this dredge material.”
Emerman said the Ohio Lake Erie commission created a Dredge Research and Innovation farming team to install applicable dredge material on farm land.
“We are looking at the dredge material as a replacement for phosphorous fertilizer,” he said. “There’s a lot of uses for dredge material. It both improves water quality, facilitates our harbors as economic drivers, and it creates valuable products.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will oversee dredging projects at eight more harbors across Ohio. Snyder said this shows their committment to keeping maritime travel safe in the Buckeye state.
“We’re here to build strong for everybody.”
