Posted on October 31, 2017
By Kathryn Cargo, Victoria Advocate
The Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District plans to have the Intracoastal Waterway dredged to its normal depth of 12 feet at the junction of the Colorado River by Nov. 1.
Hurricane Harvey closed the waterway at the junction of the Colorado River by bringing in a lot of debris, said Chris Frabotta, deputy chief of the Operations Division with the Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District.
No barges could come into Victoria from Houston after Harvey, said Skip Kaup, port executive director, until the corps dredged the depth up to 8 feet by the end of September. As of last week, the corps had removed about 800,000 cubic yards of dredge material at about $9.5 million and had dredged the depth up to 10 feet by Oct. 8, Frabotta said.
Hurricane Harvey brought 30 to 40 inches of rain within a few days to the area where the Colorado River intersects the Intracoastal Waterway, Frabotta said.
“It caused enormous amounts of sediment to be transported down the Colorado River,” he said. “At that intersection between the Colorado River and Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, the channel is typically 12 feet. It shoaled in to 0 feet. You could walk across the channel.”
The corps did an underwater survey to determine where the sediment was built up after Harvey, Frabotta said.
“We mobilized three separate pieces of dredging equipment to address the Hurricane Harvey-related shoaling,” he said. “It took us one month to get the channel opened to a reduced depth.”
When the waterway was partially open, barges could pass through at a lighter weight than normal, Frabotta said.
“The barges that transit the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway are carrying liquid product,” he said. “Seventy-five percent of them are carrying some sort of liquid. (They were) able to pump some of their material off the barge and cause the barge to not draw as much water.”
Source: Victoria Advocate
