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The Army Corps faces backlash with controversial dredging project (cont.)
The Delaware's oldest and toughest obstacle as a port is its location, 90 miles between Beckett Street terminal in Camden and the mouth of Delaware Bay. Not only does this translate into a seven-to-eight-hour detour each way for shippers, it increases the cost of dredging over that of other ports. New York's detour, by contrast, is three hours. Norfolk is two, Baltimore is nine.
According to some observers, the Delaware's location will forever keep it from joining the exclusive club of hub ports, so why bother with the deep water?
If the deepening were free, opponents say they would still object on environmental grounds. Add the cost, and they say it becomes a misguided project driven by the intoxicating smell of money: $200 million in federal funds politicians can't bring themselves to reject.
Rick Greene, an environmental engineer with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, believes public opinion on dredging has changed radically in recent years.
"I honestly don't think the corps expected this kind of scrutiny," he says.
"Citizens seem to have lost trust in government agencies and their ability to do the right thing. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody filed a lawsuit to stop the project, charging governments with failure to enforce the Water Quality Act. It's sad that it could come to this, but I don't have a good feeling that this project is not going to cause adverse environmental impact."
William Moyer, project manager for the wetlands and sub-aqueous lands section in the division of Water Quality within Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, says he is still waiting for the corps to apply for wetland and water quality permits that it promised to get more than five years ago. The corps also has not tested soils in private berths that will need to be dredged.
"Federal regulations say they must consider impact on side channels and berthing areas, but they haven't done it, Moyer insists. "And it is these areas that tend to be most toxic, not the channel, which is dredged routinely.
The Army Corps says it will pursue these matters when it signs a formal cooperative agreement with the port authority, which will, in turn, release $1.5 million in federal funds to complete the planning phase.
"Millions have been spent to protect the Delaware Estuary, and now protections are being overlooked so that same waterway can be contaminated for five years," Moyer says. "It makes no sense."
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