JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is expected to begin dredging operations on the Intracoastal Waterway (IWW) Palm Valley North Reaches next week.
Dredging will begin at the Duval-St. Johns County line and move southward to the Palm Valley Bridge.
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The work area will operate with 7.5 miles of pipe and up to five booster barges operating at any one time. All boaters and residents near the water are urged to exercise heightened caution in the project areas.
Boaters are urged to ensure passage on the correct side when approaching the dredge and abide by no-wake requirements. Navigators should also expect to see marked floating pipelines, transport barges within the IWW.
Dredging will address problematic shoaling, The Corps said in a news release. Shoaling is a process of sand build-up from erosion. It causes the channels of the waterway to become too shallow for commercial fishing and other vessels to use safely.
The Corps expects approximately 640,000 cubic yards of material to be removed from the channel. The material will then be deposited in the existing Dredge Material Management Area DU-9, located in Duval, near the county line.
Dredging will be undertaken in a single shift daily, seven days per week, with a completion date of Summer 2022. The IWW project is contracted to Ahtna Marine & Construction Company, LLC, of Pompano Beach for $7.8 million.
The Corps of Engineers maintains coastal and inland commercial navigation channels with priority given to those projects that provide the greatest economic and environmental return to the nation. These channels operate together with other federal and non-federal assets to form an intermodal transportation network.