Posted on March 12, 2018
By David Bauerlein, jacksonville.com
The dredge comes, and the dredge goes.
A month after a contractor began scooping the bottom of the St. Johns River for a deepening project that was years in the making, the dredging barge is nowhere to be seen. The contractor has moved the equipment to a job elsewhere, temporarily halting the deepening in Jacksonville.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of the deepening, says it’s been assured by Dutra, the contractor, that the hiatus on the Jacksonville deepening won’t affect Dutra’s ability to finish the first three-mile piece of deepening on time.
When Dutra officially kicked off the dredging on Feb. 3, the Corps said the work would occur “24 hours a day, seven days a week until completion.”
Dutra hit the pause button late last week. Dredging equipment will be back in Jacksonville in about three weeks, said J.C. Krause, dredging division manager for Dutra.
He said the movement of the equipment fits a schedule the company is using to deploy its equipment to different jobs. He declined to say where the company moved the equipment that was in Jacksonville.
The federal government authorized dredging 13 miles of the river at an estimated cost of $705 million, deepening the 40-foot channel to a 47-foot depth for ocean-crossing cargo container ships.
Dutra won the the $23 million contract for the first three miles. It has a completion date of July 31, 2019.
Future phases will cost more, particularly to the extent that underwater blasting is needed to break up the river bottom.
JaxPort has raised the possibility of ending the dredging at 11 miles, which would reduce the total cost.
Source: jacksonville.com
