Posted on January 10, 2022
SANDUSKY — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wasn’t able to carry out dredging for Sandusky’s harbor in 2021 but is on track to resume dredging this year, the agency says.
The local Army Corps of Engineers office in Buffalo, New York, issued an annual report on its dredging efforts, which helps keep commerce flowing in Ohio’s nine Lake Erie harbors, which are Sandusky, Huron, Vermilion, Cleveland, Lorain, Toledo, Fairport, Ashtabula and Conneaut. All but Vermilion are considered commercial harbors.
Last year’s planned Sandusky dredging could not be carried out because the Army Corps of Engineers did not have a place that could legally accept dredged material. Ohio law bans the Corps from following its previous practice of open lake dumping to get rid of the soil from the lake bottom.
The City of Sandusky had planned to use the dredged materials for the new wetland it is building along the Cedar Point Causeway, but work on the project did not begin in time, explained Michael Asquith, the project manager who oversees dredging in Lake Erie.
But that’s no longer a problem, Asquith said.
“The good news is they are out there constructing it right now,” he said.
A contract for the Sandusky work should be awarded at the end of April, with the dredging taking place sometime in July, he said.
While it’s unfortunate Sandusky didn’t get any dredging done last year, the harbor should still be OK, Asquith said.
Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, so a regular program of dredging is necessary to keep navigation channels open for Great Lakes shipping. The vast majority of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Great Lakes dredging efforts are carried out in Lake Erie, Asquith said.
Dredging was carried out at Huron’s harbor in August, while dredging was done in Vermilion in the fall.
Ohio’s commercial harbors support both national and international commerce, the Army Corps of Engineers says.
More than 35 million tons of commodities such as iron ore, coal, grain, sand, stone, potash and salt pass through Ohio’s commercial harbors every year, supporting tens of thousands of Ohio jobs and billions of dollars of business revenue.
“Waterborne transportation facilitated by Sandusky Harbor supports $129.2 million in business revenue, 572 direct, indirect, and induced jobs, and $42.7 million in labor income to the transportation sector,” said Avery Schneider, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Without the dredging, Ohio’s harbors would fill with sediment and shippers would have to resort to more expensive railroad or truck shipping for bulk commodities, impacting jobs, revenues and the environment.
The Buffalo District got $19.2 million last year to carry out dredging at Ohio’s eight commercial harbors.
Ohio’s law banning open lake dumping makes the dredging work more expensive and difficult, the Corps says; last year, planned dredging in Sandusky and two other locations was delayed for lack of a suitable disposal site for the dredged materials
