Fort Lauderdale Dredging Project Keeps Port Channels Deep

Starting early next year, boats and yacht traversing Port Everglades Inlet in Fort Lauderdale, Florida will see a dredge biting into the channel bottom as part of a multi-million dollar project to keep the port deep enough for massive commercial vessels.

The dredging is simple maintenance to remove shoaling at the port’s entrance and two other areas to ensure the channel stays at its authorized depth of 42′, port officials said. The last time the channels had to be dredged was seven years ago.

“This is like housekeeping,” said Ellen Kennedy, the port’s manager of corporate and community relations. The Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over the federal waterways of the port, is soliciting bids for the work, which should cost from $5 million to $10 million.

“They anticipate having a notice to proceed to a selected contractor sometime in January (2013),” said David Anderton, seaport planning manager.

Unlike other harbors, Port Everglades hasn’t had to battle severe encroachment from shifting sands. “We’re fairly lucky,” Anderton said. “We’re very fortunate in that we don’t get a lot of shoaling here.”

One benefit from the project: “beach quality” sand from the channel bottom will find a home close by. “That material is actually going to be placed on the beach at John U. Lloyd State Park,” Anderton said.

Other areas to be dredged are the port’s turning basin, where ships maneuver, and channels on the facility’s southern end.

Kennedy said a study is underway to determine if the port should be deepened even more to accommodate massive freighters, called “post-Panamax” ships, designed to navigate a deeper Panama Canal that will open in 2014. Such vessels require depths approaching 50 feet.

The largest cargo ship ever to berth at Port Everglades, the MSC Texas, 1,095 feet long and 141′ wide, is due to arrive Monday. Because it needs 47′ of water, it will not be fully laden.

Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel