Posted on June 24, 2026
Public park aside, the Port of Cleveland’s Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Strategy (CHEERS) serves a singular intention: repurpose dredge material from the Cuyahoga River that the Port is running out of space to store elsewhere.
But what happens if the project is delayed, or worse, doesn’t occur at all? We may soon find out.
The question was first raised publicly at the Port’s June 10 board of directors meeting. The Port is still waiting on the planning process for an alternative for dredge material from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which is responsible for dredging navigation channels such as the Cuyahoga River in the United States.
CHEERS has not been formally approved by USACE, Sternheimer later told Crain’s Cleveland Business in an interview. That’s forcing the Port to seek alternative routes to get the project started.
Why the rush? The Port anticipates reaching capacity for dredge material by 2029, and to properly alleviate the materials, CHEERS needs to begin by next year.
