The United States Army Corps’ history in dredging the Delaware River main shipping channel dates back to the late 1800s when the controlling depth of the Delaware River was 18 feet.
As ships with deeper drafts evolved, periodic modifications of the channel took place over the years, eventually reaching the current 40-foot depth during World War II.
For more than 60 years the Corps’ Philadelphia District has maintained the Delaware River at this authorized depth, thus allowing the safe transit of commercial and recreational vessels from Philadelphia to the Delaware Bay.
In 1983, Congress directed the Army Corps’ Philadelphia District to begin a study to determine if it was in the federal interest to modify the existing 40-foot Delaware River shipping channel. In 1987, the study progressed to the feasibility phase where extensive environmental and economic studies were performed.
The 1992 final feasibility report recommended to Congress that the channel be deepened to 45 feet and that doing so was environmentally sound, economically justified and technically feasible. Congress supported that recommendation by authorizing the deepening project for construction in 1992.
During the subsequent Preconstruction Engineering and Design (PED) phase, the Army Corps completed an economic re-evaluation and spent over $7 million in additional environmental analyses, consulting national experts and conducting studies with the close cooperation of the appropriate federal and state environmental agencies.
The resulting Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) was circulated for both resource agency and public review in January 1997. After an extended comment period, the document was finalized in July 1997 and again circulated for public comment.
In May 1998, the Army Corps held a public hearing. In December 1998, the Record of Decision was signed, signifying completion of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA process.
The next year, the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA), the original local sponsor of the project, committed $50 million to the effort. In 2001, as political, environmental and geographical storm clouds gathered over the project, the Army Corps applied for a subaqueous lands permit from the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC).
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) audited the economic analysis of the project’s benefits in 2002 and called for a comprehensive reanalysis, which was completed in December of that year. As the project stalled, a supplemental report was issued in 2004 that confirmed the economic justification for the deepening after an independent review.
The ensuing years were fraught with political battles between the three states—Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware—as well as environmental fights in court. Between 2001-2006, the Army Corps spent more than $3 million alone in additional environmental studies, the conclusion of which was the deepening would have “no adverse impact” on the Delaware River.
The impasse was partially broken in 2008, when the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PRPA) assumed local sponsorship and the historic Project Partnership Agreement was signed on June 23 at a ceremony on the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal.
However, in response to Assistant Secretary of the Army John Paul Woodley’s April 2009 decision to authorize the project without a permit from Delaware, DNREC formally denied the permit application in July. Three months later, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy reaffirmed Mr. Woodley’s decision.
In November 2009, Delaware sued in federal court to stop the project, which was scheduled to begin in an 11.5-mile stretch in Delaware waters called Reach C. Two months later, Federal Judge Sue Lewis Robinson rejected Delaware’s suit and the project began in March 2010.
The Delaware River Main Stem Channel Deepening Project will cost approximately $353 million dollars — with about two-thirds funded by the federal government and the remainder by the PRPA, the non-federal sponsor.
The project is designed to deepen the existing main shipping channel of the Delaware River from 40 feet to 45 feet from Philadelphia Harbor, Pennsylvania and Beckett Street Terminal, Camden, New Jersey to the mouth of the Delaware Bay.
Although this is a total distance of 102.5 miles, 33 miles (mostly in the Delaware Bay) are already at 45 feet or deeper. The project follows the existing 40-foot federal main shipping channel alignment.
The existing authorized widths in the straight portions of the channel, ranging from 400 feet in Philadelphia to 1,000 feet in the bay, will not change. However, 12 of the existing 16 bends in the channel will be widened for safer navigation. In addition, the Marcus Hook Anchorage will be deepened to 45 feet.
To deepen the channel, approximately 12 million-cubic-yards of material must be removed during initial construction of the project. The material to be dredged from the river portion is placed at existing federal upland Confined Disposal Facilities, or CDFs, in New Jersey and Delaware. While these sites will provide more than adequate long-term capacity, material placed there will also be available for beneficial uses in other locations.
For example, about 150,000 cubic yards of dredged material from the Army Corps’ National Park, New Jersey CDF was donated to West Deptford Township for use in its River Winds riverfront development project. The Philadelphia Regional Port Authority funded the cost of transporting the material to the site.
About 3 million-cubic-yards of material is primarily good quality sand from the Delaware Bay. The sand will be dredged and placed along the Delaware Bay coastline for shore protection at Broadkill Beach.
To ensure that construction of the project does not impact the natural resources of the region, the Army Corps has set up pre-construction monitoring to establish baseline information that the Corps, DNREC and other state and federal agencies will use to track the ongoing effects of the project. Data is being collected on sturgeon, oysters, horseshoe crabs, shorebirds, blue crabs and sand builder worms. The monitoring will continue during and after project construction.
Sources: The United States Army Corps of Engineers and the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority.