Senior leaders from the Army Corps’ North Atlantic Division, together with the officials from other districts, spent the beginning of the week at the Corps, New England for quarterly regional governance meetings.
During the visit, officials toured the district’s ongoing Boston Harbor Dredging Project – a $350 million partnership between the Army Corps, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport).
The three-phase project involves deepening and improving various portions of the Boston Harbor Federal Navigation Channel.
Phase 1 – the maintenance dredging of the inner harbor – was awarded to Great Lakes Dredge and Dock in September 2016 and completed in December 2017.
Phase 2 (currently underway) involves dredging 11.7 million cubic yards of silt, blue clay, till and weathered rock.
The $122.2 million contract was awarded to the Joint Venture of Cashman Dredging, Inc. and Dutra Group in February 2018. Construction started in July 2018 and is now almost halfway done.
Phase 3 (future work) will involve removing approximately 200,000 to 500,000 cubic yards of hard rock. The contract solicitation is anticipated to be released in spring 2020 with the work getting underway later that year.
With bigger locks open on the Panama Canal and shipping companies building larger ships that will fit through them to reduce shipping costs, deeper channels will enable Port of Boston to accommodate more of that traffic when complete.