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Funding sources for the dredging project
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JEF DAUBER/Courier-Post
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Funding for the Delaware River deepening project--now estimated to cost $311 million--is complex. Congress will provide $200 million, and has already appropriated $1.5 million.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania have both appropriated their respective shares of $13 million and $15 million. Delaware is expected to contribute $7.5 million, but has only appropriated $2 million because it has not given full approval to the project.
And though the Delaware River Port Authority, the key local sponsor, has not formally approved the project, it is expected to contribute somewhere between $40 million and $70 million over the four-year life of the project.
Three years ago, New Jersey residents passed a $300 million bond issue ostensibly for water quality. But New Jersey's share of the dredging project--$13 million--comes from that bond. The lion's share will be spent dredging the ports of New York and New Jersey.
The price tag for deepening the Delaware pales in comparison with deepening 12 miles on the Kill Van Kull channel to Newark Bay, which is expected to cost $733 million because of the toxic sediment and logistical difficulties of dredging in a narrow, busy channel. That deepening also requires removal of large quantities of rock by blasting from the bottom. Another two miles in the Port Jersey channel must be dredged at a cost of $102 million, and it will cost $255 million to dredge three miles in the Arthur Kill.
--EILEEN STILWELL
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