Posted on July 27, 2017
By JoAnn Merrigan, WSAV
It’s a milestone for SHEP (Savannah Harbor Expansion project) that took about a year to accomplish and at a cost of $6.5 million.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says contractors “raised a dike” in an area just across the river in South Carolina where dredged material (from smaller projects) has been stored. The dike raising increased the height of the containment wall and this new and improved dike is now larger and able to serve as a receptacle for huge amounts of material that will come from the bottom of the river (also known as the inner harbor.)
The Corps says “removal of this material will result in a new channel depth of 47 feet below mean sea level, or 5 feet deeper than its current depth and that SHEP will allow newer, larger cargo vessels to enter and leave the harbor more easily and with heavier loads than currently allowed.”
The dike lays the groundwork for the actual dredging of the river. Work on seven miles of outer harbor near Tybee is now about 60 percent complete.
The inner harbor is the most important part of the project but the Corps tells us the actual dredging here may not begin until sometime in 2019. There are several environmental projects required in SHEP, one of them to replace oxygen in the water, which will be taken away by the dredging. The oxygen replacement is considered an important component for fish and other wildlife to survive.
A dissolved oxygen injection system which consists of putting large machines (that look like cones) in two locations near the river may be reading for installation by December of this year. The cost for that system is now $99 million. After the system is installed, it must be monitored for three months to prove it is working.
The total cost of SHEP is now projected to be well over $950 million.
Source: WSAV
