Port Jersey Channel dredging could start this summer

Port Jersey Channel dredging could start this summer Work is expected to being this summer on deepening the Port Jersey Channel to 50 feet from the Global Marine Terminal in Jersey City to the former Military Ocean Terminal (MOTBY) in Bayonne, N.J.
   Taking the channel from 41 feet to 50 feet by late 2008 or early 2009, the project would allow larger containerships to call New York.
   Vessels calling other container terminals in the Port of New York and New Jersey are restricted by the vertical clearance of the Bayonne Bridge, which has an air draft of about 151 feet. Vessels calling Global, however, merely have to pass beneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at the entrance of the harbor, which has 228 feet of clearance at mean high water.
   The project will deepen and straighten the Port Jersey Channel by removing 3.4 million cubic yards of material.
   The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers first authorized the channel to be dredged from 35-38 feet to 41 feet back in 1986. The project languished due to lack of sponsorship, though a portion of the channel was dredged to 38 feet in 1998. In January 2003, work on deepening the waterway to 41 feet began, and since then $26 million has been spent to remove more than 1 million cubic yards of material from the channel.
   When the port decided to deepen main shipping channels in New York to 50 feet, it was decided to also deepen the Port Jersey Channel to 50 feet as well. Rather than dredge the area twice — bringing the remaining areas to 41 feet and then to 50 feet — the final phases of the 41-foot deepening project were rolled into the 50-foot project.
   Maurice Byan, president and chief executive officer of Global Terminal and Container Services, noted that ships drawing 41 feet are able to use the terminal today.
   Once dredging to 50 feet is completed, the terminal would be able to handle some of the biggest ships afloat. Byan said the terminal already has six super-post-Panamax cranes capable of stretching across 22 rows of containers.
   The extra time the project has taken has enabled New Jersey to find a second user for the channel: the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. By having two users who need deeper water to accommodate big ships, New Jersey will avoid having to pay back the federal share of the dredging project.
   While Global Terminal is a privately owned terminal — it was sold earlier this year by the parent company of the shipping line OOCL to the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund — the eastern tip of the peninsula on which it is located is owned by the port authority. Under an agreement with the current tenant on the eastern end of the peninsula, Northeast Auto-Marine Terminal, the authority will take back 16 acres of that terminal later this year. They plan to improve that land so that it can be used for container storage.
   Because the land will be port authority-owned, the second owner/user will mean New Jersey will not have to repay the federal share of the dredging — even if the 16 acres is eventually leased to Global.
   Some of the project involves widening the channel into an area called the “Jersey Flats.” The flats, which at some points are only 12 feet deep, is considered to be an ecologically sensitive, important shallow water habitat, used heavily by flounder for spawning.
   The New Jersey Department of Transportation and Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) have recommended a mitigation strategy where material removed from the flats would be used to recreate shallow water habitat in areas previously deepened for the former military terminal in Bayonne.
   The dredging would also involve placing metal plates over a century-old sewage outfall pipeline, to replace the weight of spoil being removed from on top of the pier, W. Scott Douglas, project manager-maritime for the state DOT, told the port’s Harbor Operations Committee in a meeting last week.
   The 12-foot-diameter outfall pipe carries treated effluent from the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission’s plant in Newark and terminates at Robins Reef in New York Harbor. The five-mile-long, unreinforced concrete pipe carries about 300 million gallons of treated wastewater per day from 48 cities in Northern New Jersey with a population of about 1.3 million — about a quarter of all the wastewater generated in the state. The pipe is 64 feet below the surface of the water, and the channel will be dredged to 52 feet.
   Removal of the overburden, the state said, could limit the tunnel’s ability to withstand high pressure from storms. So it has proposed replacing the sediment deadload with steel plates and limiting flow during construction. The work would require a new permit from the NJDEP.
   The Army Corps of Engineers will handle safety and logistics for the project.