Posted on April 3, 2019
A maintenance dredging campaign to restore the design depths at certain berths inside Duncan Dock at the Port of Cape Town is scheduled to begin at the start of April.
The main objective of the dredging campaign, which will be carried out by Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA)’s Dredging Services division, is to ensure that the port provides safe navigational channels and berthing facilities for shipping.
TNPA said that it would prioritise the removal of high spots that had been detected within Duncan Dock and the work is scheduled for completion at the end of May 2019.
Two dredging vessels Isandlwana, a Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger (TSHD), and the Italeni, a grab hopper dredger, will be mobilised by TNPA Dredging Services for this purpose.
The TSHD is built for high speed sailing to the offshore disposal site and will remove approximately 60,000 to 70,000 cu m of material from the harbour sea bed.
The dredge material within Duncan Dock will be disposed of at the offshore disposal site, the use of which has been approved by the Department of Environmental affairs.
Multi-beam bathymetric surveys will be conducted at regular intervals throughout the campaign to ensure that all areas within the Duncan Dock are restored to their original design depths.
TNPA’s fleet renewal programme has boosted the dredging division’s capacity to aid the removal of approximately 4 cu m of excess material from the seabed every year at South Africa’s ports.
Through utilising the most modern equipment available in the specialised service industry, TNPA’s dredging division aims to not only meet just the needs of the South African port system but the needs of Southern Africa as a whole.
Another project Transnet is looking into at the Port of Cape Town in particular aims to meet the needs of South Africa is reverse osmosis – the process of converting seawater into drinking water – in order to help the water scarce region.
The company has approved further studies to be conducted into a Sea Water Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) at the port which, if found to be a viable option, could be introduced by the end of 2020.
TNPA’s Cape Town acting port manager Captain Alex Miya said that the next steps would be to appoint consultants to conduct studies that could be concluded by September 2019.
Miya said: “The port is confident that the municipality will ensure a water resilient region through a mix of water sources.
“In the meantime, we have considered a few options to ensure economic sustainability.”
The proposed location for the plant, which is expected to provide in the order of 1m to 3m litres a day, is the Quay 700 area in the port.
TNPA previously implemented measures to manage water usage at the port after the city imposed widespread restrictions on using municipal drinking quality of water for non-essential purposes.
These included suspending the sale and supply of potable fresh water to vessels calling at the Port of Cape Town and informing ship repairers to make use of mobile water supply.
Good rainfall in 2018 and the substantial reduction in usage has allowed for municipal restrictions to be reduced from level six to level three in 2019.
However, the region’s dependence on dam water could result in similar shortfalls in the future.
Source: container-mag.com
