Dredging armada converging on Louisiana
News - June 18, 2010
Engineering News Record reports that the Shaw Group in the US is reportedly working obtain access to a large number of dredgers - including up to seven cutter suction dredgers and five trailinh suction hopper dredgers - for emergency dredging work to help tackle the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil spill. However, said the report, the problem is that a lot of the equipment is already deployed elsewhere.
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock's cutterhead dredge California is first to start work on the 128 project to create sand berms to prevent the oil from reaching the coast.
“Much of the equipment is under contract to other entities, mostly the Corps of Engineers,” says Charlie Hess, a project manager with the Baton Rouge-based contractor.
“Most dredges we are talking about are working navigation projects,” said Chris Accardo, chief of operations division for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District.
“We understand the urgency for the berm construction, but at the same time we don’t want to throw navigation interests under the bus. We’re trying to balance the navigation mission with berm construction.”
According to the report, by June 14, Shaw had two dredges signed up to help build the US$360 million project to reinforce barrier islands from the Chandeleur Islands on the east side of the mouth of the Mississippi River Delta to the Scofield Island on the west.
California was already operating near the site on an unrelated project for the Corps but is now engaged in constructing berms.
Shaw also has engaged Stuyvesant, a hopper dredge owned by Stuyvesant Dredging in New Orleans. Stuyvesant was not under contract, so putting it to work was relatively straightforward, but Great Lakes had to obtain a no-cost extension on its contract with the Corps in order to get released for the berm work.
However, Engineering News Record say Shaw is having more difficulty obtaining a contract release on two other hopper dredges, Bayport and the Newport. Their owner, Seattle-based Manson Construction, had both under contract for Mississippi River dredging.
"For a dredge to be moved from a Corps project to the berm barrier, the dredging contractor that owns the equipment must request a release from the contracting district," explained Bruce Terrell, chief of the Corps’ New Orleans District (NOD) construction division.
“We are entertaining requests for no-cost extensions under suspension-of-work clauses in the contracts,” Terrell says. “Contractually, we can agree to a modification of the contract that temporarily suspends work on that contract at no cost to the government for some estimated time period.”
The government doesn’t want to release the dredges indefinitely, Terrell adds, so the extensions must include a time estimate. “We make a determination on a project-by-project basis as to whether or not that can happen,” Accardo says. Suspending operations can have negative consequences. Taking a dredge off channel maintenance, for instance, can create problems for navigation.
“If we were to take all of the hopper dredges out of Southwest Pass at the mouth of the Mississippi,” Accardo says, “that would cause the draft level to be bumped up. That request would have to go higher up the chain of command, and both the state and federal government would have to look at it to determine what’s in the best interest of the public.”
The Corps is expediting requests as quickly as possible, says Ken Holder, director of public affairs, NOD. “Within three hours after we got the request to release the California, we had it released.”
However, many competing interests are weighing in on the significance of missions and priorities. If dredging is reduced at Southwest Pass, which routinely shoals, it could affect nationwide commerce, says Captain Michael R Lorino Jr, president of the Associated Branch Pilots (bar pilots) for the Port of New Orleans. “If you close the pass, it would not be best for the state and country,” Lorino says.
