GALVESTON, Texas (Sept. 11, 2013) – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District, awarded a contract in the amount of $1,131,067 to RLB Contracting Inc., for dewatering and incremental levee raising at dredging placement areas 1 and 2 located north of the Harbor Causeway or Highway 181, on the east side of the Inner Harbor, Corpus Christi, Texas.
"Dewatering allows for the outflow of excess water and increases the placement area's capacity to hold more dredge material from the Inner Harbor Reach of the Corpus Christi Ship Channel," said Paula Wise, an operations manager with the USACE Galveston District's Navigation Branch. "This process is part of the district's Disposal Area Management Practices (DAMP) which ensures placement areas are prepared for future dredging activities."
Dewatering contracts are a key component of the Corps' overall management of dredged material placement areas. Each year, the USACE Galveston District dredges approximately 30 to 40 million cubic yards of material from Texas channels to fulfill its mission of keeping waterways open for navigation and commerce (benefiting 28 ports handling 500 million tons of commerce annually).
According to Wise, the contract work is cost-shared with the non-federal sponsor, the Port of Corpus Christi Port Authority, and will be managed by the USACE Galveston District’s Corpus Christi Resident Office.
Work is scheduled to begin October 2013 with an estimated completion date of April 2014.
The USACE Galveston District was established in 1880 as the first engineer district in Texas to oversee river and harbor improvements. The district is directly responsible for maintaining more than 1,000 miles of channel, including 250 miles of deep draft and 750 miles of shallow draft as well as the Colorado River Locks and Brazos River Floodgates.
To learn more about dredging along the Texas coast, view our four-minute video, http://bit.ly/KLZQBM. For more news and information, visit www.swg.usace.army.mil. Find us on Facebook, www.facebook.com/GalvestonDistrict or follow us on Twitter, www.twitter.com/USACEgalveston.