Engineers Give New Details About $12.7M Daufuskie, Jekyll Dredging. Here’s What we Know

Google Maps and the Office of the U.S. Coast Survey

The $12.7 million dredging project scheduled for Daufuskie Island this year will vacuum up underwater material on west side of the island and relocate it out to sea in an effort to maintain the Intracoastal Waterway, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Savannah.

The Department of Defense announced the project’s contract Friday and the Corps provided details Monday.

Work is scheduled to start mid-February on the waterway — which runs between Hilton Head and the mainland in Calibogue Sound and west around Daufuskie Island.

During the project, Daufuskie residents, boaters and those living on the south end of Hilton Head will be able to see a large hopper dredge working in the area, Billy Birdwell, the senior public affairs officer for the corps, said Monday.

The waterway around Daufuskie is “authorized to be 12 feet deep,” Birdwell said Monday.

“In some places (the channel) can be as low as five feet,” he said of current conditions.

Once the material is collected from the floor of the waterway, it will be stored in the bottom of the dredge and dumped in an “authorized location off in the ocean,” he said.

United States Government Accountability Office

Cottrell Contracting Corporation, a company based in Chesapeake, Va., will be dredging near Daufuskie as well as around Jekyll Island in Georgia.

Near Jeykll, Birdwell said the corps will be doing a pilot project where the dredge collects sediment and sprays it “in a very thin layer” over the surrounding marsh because “we don’t have a place on or near Jekyll Island to dispose of that material.”

Both projects are expected to be finished by Aug. 2.

“I compare (it) to resurfacing a highway,” Birdwell said. “It’s an inconvenience but it’s better when its done.”

The path of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway along the west side of Daufuskie Island, South Carolina.Google Maps and the Office of the U.S. Coast Survey.

Source: The Island Packet