Army Corps awards Charleston Harbor Deepening Project contract

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded the first contract, worth $47 million, of the Charleston Harbor Post 45 Deepening Project to Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company.

   The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has award the first construction contract for the Charleston Harbor Post 45 Deepening Project at the Port of Charleston.
   The contract, worth $47 million, was awarded to Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company for work in the Entrance Channel. The contract specifically lists new work and maintance dredging of six million cubic yards of material from the Entrance Channel to reach a depth of 54 feet. The dreding will allow vessels of up to 14,000 TEUs to enter the harbor without difficulty.
   The dredged material will be placed in the Ocean Dredged Material Disposal Site offshore, said the USACE.
   The USACE predicts that hopper dredges will be utilized for construction, which is required to be completed by spring 2020. Due to the presence of threatened and endangered species, hopper dredge operations are restricted to an environmental dredging window, generally from December to March each year, the USACE explained.
   “We’re very excited to have awarded the first contract for dredging that will start deepening Charleston Harbor,” said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Palazzini, district commander. “The Charleston District team has been diligently working on this locally-, regionally- and nationally-important project with the South Carolina Ports Authority since well-before I took command, so I’m proud to see their hard work come to fruition.” 
   The second contract for the project may be awarded before the end of 2017, said the USACE. The entire project will take between 40 and 76  months, as construction is dependent on full-funding, dredge availability, weather and a variety of other factors.
   A timeline for the dredging of the upper and lower harbors, for which funding was first allocated in 2012, has not yet been finalized, as the USACE has also approved several other waterway improvement projects.