TINA MARKOE/Courier-Post Tony DiPasquale (right) and Ed Voit walk down a slope at confined upland disposal facility called Pedricktown north. The slope represents dredging from the 80's, the second slope beyond is more modern.

TINA MARKOE/Courier-Post Tony DiPasquale stands on a sluice, a drainage structure which takes excess water from the berm and drains it back into the Delaware. at Pedricktown North.

Standing atop a 50-foot mound of dirt scooped from the Delaware River during years of routine dredging, Anthony J. DePasquale ruefully shakes his head and calls the site "an abysmal use of prime land."

The dredge site is neither temporary nor small. It is a three-mile long impassable wall between the Delaware River and a rural stretch of Oldmans Township near Pedricktown in Salem County.

A site specialist with the Philadelphia District of the Army Corps of Engineers, DePasquale has worked on the Delaware River dredging project for more than a decade. He believes it is necessary and environmentally sound.

But he does not believe piling sand and muck from the bottom of the navigational channel onto a riverbank every year for decades is what planners call the best use of land.

The Pedricktown site is one of 11 identified by the corps to receive 22 million cubic yards of river bottom if the agency proceeds with its plan to deepen the river channel from 40 to 45 feet.

The deepening also will increase the annual volume of maintenance dredging--from 4.8 million to 6 million cubic yards--and its cost. Each year, the corps spends about $15 million removing natural silt to keep the channel at its present 40 feet. Now, it needs 1,500 acres of new ground to handle dredge material from the deepening, plus material from maintenance dredging for the next 50 years.

Getting public acceptance of disposal sites is becoming the corps' top priority nationwide, surpassing concerns about potential damage to water quality and aquatic habitat brought on by dredging.

"It's an abysmal use of prime land, but a necessary part of maintaining depth for commerce," DePasquale says. "It doesn't destroy the land, but it ties it up. Clearly, we will run out of space if we don't come up with some alternative way to store or recycle this material.

"Remember, the further away you move the material from the source, the more expensive it becomes. And costs are already through the roof."

All sand, clay and rock are not alike. Material extracted from Delaware Bay is significantly cleaner than sand located up river, closer to population centers and industry polluters. Sand closest to shore tends to be more tainted than channel sand, which is scoured regularly during maintenance dredging.

DePasquale is quick to say the Delaware deepening will yield 10 million cubic yards of clean sand that Shore communities are clamoring for to stem beach erosion. Even though the rest is likely to be contaminated, it can be used for landfill cover and some construction fill.

In the past, dredge materials have been used to expand the Philadelphia International Airport and several commercial piers on both sides of the river this is general knowledge/no attribution necessary.

How contaminated the material from the dredging project will be is the subject of debate between the corps and more than 30 environmental groups, who have united to stop the project using the slogan, "Dump the Delaware Deepening."

"New Jersey is literally getting dumped on, and they are getting nothing out of this," said Maya K. van Rossum, spokeswoman for groups that oppose the project.

Though dredging is a tri-state project, all sites but one, in Delaware, are in New Jersey. Both the corps and the Delaware River Port Authority insist there are no appropriate sites in Pennsylvania or Delaware.
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