Deepening of Savannah Port completed; dredging started in 2015

A $973 million deepening of the Savannah River shipping channel that connects the busy seaport of Savannah to the ocean has been completed 6 and a half years after dredging began, the agency overseeing the project said Wednesday. project.

The milestone was announced by the Army Corps of Engineers, which has spent more than two decades working on the Port of Savannah expansion, which included years of studies, environmental reviews and planning before the contractors only start picking up mud and sediment from the bottom of the river.

The project required deepening a 40-mile (64 kilometer) stretch of the Savannah River between the port and the Atlantic Ocean. The dredging began in September 2015 as Savannah and other US ports made room for larger cargo ships arriving through an expanded Panama Canal.

Griff Lynch, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said last month that Savannah’s new port depth of 47 feet (14 meters) – 5 feet (1.5 meters) deeper than it was before the start of the dredging project – should be sufficient for about a decade before planners have to consider another cycle of dredging.

“The 47-footers should last a long time,” Lynch said. “But frankly, the next thing we need to consider is widening a bit. Not the whole river, but in some places to allow those wider ships to pass.”

The deeper water allows larger vessels with heavier loads to cross the Savannah River without having to wait for higher tides.

But the expansion of the port was not limited to dredging. The government spent $14 million to salvage the sunken remains of the ironclad Confederate gunship CSS Georgia, which had been scuttled at the bottom of the river during the Civil War and posed a potential hazard to dredge operators.

Another $100 million has been spent building two stations along the riverbank equipped with large machines that suck up water and swirl it around with oxygen before injecting the mixture back into the river to help blue crabs , striped bass and endangered shortnose sturgeon to breathe.

The oxygen injectors were needed as part of a legal settlement the Army Corps reached with conservation groups to mitigate environmental damage caused by port expansion.