Dredging provides visible sign of waterfront redevelopment ahead – Coastal Observer

Dredging provides visible sign of waterfront redevelopment ahead – Coastal Observer

The largest vessel to enter the Georgetown Harbor in a decade will arrive this month, giving a public face to the waterfront revitalization that has existed in plans and drawings. The 350-foot dredge will remove about 560,000 cubic yards of silt to restore the federal channel to a depth of 12 feet along the Harborwalk, the former steel mill and the former state port. “Our contractor is moving pipe as we speak,” Sonja Carter, the project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, told an audience of about 80 people at the S.C. Maritime Museum this week. The work is due to fiinish by September, ahead of the Georgetown Wooden Boat Show that the museum sponsors. The Corps used to maintain the channel to a depth of 27 feet, which allowed ocean-going ships to dock at the mill and port. It was last dredged in 2008 because of a decline in traffic. The last ship docked at the state port in 2016. Georgetown County now owns the 40-acre port site and has hired a firm to create a redevelopment plan. Public meetings to collect input are due to start in September.  A private investor is also making plans for mixed-use development on the steel mill property and the idle International Paper Co. mill farther up the Sampit River. County Administrator Angela Christian said the goal when the dredging initiative began three years ago was to restore economic activity to the waterfront while the long-term redevelopment efforts take shape. “It will kickstart the redevelopment,” she said. The county collected $6 million for port dredging from a capital project sales tax approved by voters in 2014. That work was never done because the cost ballooned after the measure passed. The county still has that money and Christian said she will propose that the county use it to extend the Harborwalk from its terminus at Rainey Park to the port. Georgetown Mayor Jay Doyle said he supports the idea. He used the meeting on the dredging project to outline a plan to create pedestrian, trolley and water taxi routes. But before all that occurs, “we’ll have small inconveniences,” Carter said. The dredge will operate around the clock, seven days a week, starting near East Bay Park and moving upstream toward the spoils disposal site on the south side of the river across from the paper mill. “It’s really going to be kind of a bull in the china shop,” said Michael Kitchell of Southern Dredging Co., the contractor for the $3.6 million project. “The dredge is about 350 feet long and about 40 feet wide, and it’s got a 3,000 horsepower pump. So it’s loud.” There will also be anchors, pipeline and service barges in the waterway. Coast Guard “notice to mariners” will provide updates on the location of the work for boaters. “Communication is going to be a key,” Kitchell said. “So hopefully we can go through it as quick as we can and kind of get out of y’all’s way.” Another impact from the cutterhead dredge will be clouds of silt in the water. “That is normal. It is temporary,” Carter said.  An environmental assessment found “insignificant impacts” from the work. It noted that the existing water quality in the lower Sampit is “notably impaired.” Asked how long the channel would remain at its new depth, she said that the Corps doesn’t have enough data to estimate that. The channel will be monitored quarterly following the dredging. The Corps used a 12-foot channel depth rather than the 27-foot authorized depth because it would be less expensive and still provide access for commercial vessels, Carter said. The project received $6.5 million in congressional funding, but because Southern Dredging is based in Charleston and was already doing work there, the cost was below estimates. “That additional funding, we’re requesting to hold onto it,” Carter said.