Posted on March 27, 2017
By Brian Nearing, TimesUnion.com
The state is pushing ahead with plans to dredge the 60-mile Champlain Canal for the first time in decades, a move that was welcomed by shippers and business officials.
The state Canal Corp. wants to dredge along 22 miles of the man-made part of the canal over the next decade between Whitehall and Fort Edward in Washington County, according to a March 13 notice from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
No dredging has been done since 1980 because of toxic PCBs in the canal’s navigation channel in the Hudson River south of Fort Edward. This proposal is separate from an earlier state plan filed with the Corps last year to dredge the PCB-tainted portion of the canal from Fort Edward to Troy in Rensselaer County.
That February 2016 proposal remains under review by the Corps, which has deemed it incomplete, said Corps spokesman Hector Mosley on Thursday. The Canal Corp. could not provide any comment for this story.
The canal runs from Whitehall, near the tip of Lake Champlain’s South Bay, south through six locks and dams to Fort Edward, where it joins the Hudson and proceeds through another series of six locks and dams to Waterford. Canal dredging was not part of a six-year, $1 billion Hudson PCB dredging project wrapped up in the fall of 2016 by General Electric Co. under an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The latest dredging announcement for the canal was welcomed by Saratoga County business leaders, who have said the canal, which has become increasingly shallow as it gradually fills with silt, has impaired commercial shipping.
Under the state constitution, the canal’s navigation channel must be at least 12 feet deep, but in some places, it is as shallow as 4 feet, according to information on the Canal Corp’s. website. The state is proposing to dredge its entire length to 14 feet deep.
“The canal is a vital asset upstate,” said Pete Bardunias, president and CEO of the Chamber of Southern Saratoga County. “This could open it up to more shipping.”
A deeper canal channel would benefit shipments of granite currently being taken south by tugboat from near Lock 11 in Fort Ann to the New York City area, said Robert Goldman, president of the New York State Marine Highway Transportation Co.
In 2016, his company reached a five-year contract with New Jersey-based Azzil Granite Materials to provide paving stone. Currently, Goldman said he can only load barges with granite based on a 10-foot channel depth, and then be prepared to have barges scrape through the riverbottom mud.
Last year, Goldman’s company shipped about 500,000 tons of granite, and this year, hopes to ship 700,000 tons, he said.
The dredging plan for the northern section of the canal calls for removal of 176,000 cubic yards of sediments from 13 areas totalling 27 acres, according to the Army Corps notice. Once dredged, sediments would be disposed of at existing Canal Corp. storage sites along the canal.
In 2013, the corporation estimated that it could cost up to $180 million to dredge 600,000 cubic yards of PCB-tainted sediment from the channel south of Fort Edward.
In late 2015, the Army Corps told the state Canal Corp. that it needed to replace its original 2012 dredging plan, which relied for disposal of PCBs on a now-defunct GE processing plant in Fort Edward. The Canal Corp’s current proposal calls for building a new PCB processing plant just south of Lock 8 in Fort Edward.
The issue of further dredging of the canal rests in the hands of three federal trustees for the Hudson — the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In 2006, trustees issued a public report that found GE had damaged the canal with its PCBs by preventing the state from dredging. The report concluded that the state was “entitled to be compensated for the loss of navigational services” since that time.
Source: timesunion
