Township Mayor David Shields accepted a gift of 220,000 cubic yards of dredge spoils Wednesday and a $1.1 million grant from the Delaware River Port Authority to move them from neighboring National Park into his township.

Collected from years of scooping out the bottom of the Delaware River channel, to maintain a 40-foot depth necessary for safe navigation, the spoils will be spread over the township's premier waterfront redevelopment site, called Riverwinds.

Excavation and truck transport is expected to begin Monday and end about 100 workdays later.

The township requested clean fill from the Army Corps of Engineers to cover contaminated soils found on the 1,100- acre Riverwinds site, a dredge site previously owned by a gas company.

Once completed, Riverwinds will be a mix of commercial and recreational space that will include ice and roller rinks, an 18-hole golf course, a marina and a $28 million community center where Delaware Street meets the river. Construction on the center is nearing completion.

"It seemed like a common-sense approach to use free stockpiled materials, rather than pay for it, as long as it is clean and we are confident it is," Shields said.

Township Engineer Edwin J. Steck said West Deptford spent about $30,000 testing the materials before it agreed to use them. The decision to reuse rather than buy saved the township in excess of $500,000, he said.

"It's what we call well-graded sandy loam. It will be very suitable for growing grass," Steck said.

The Army Corps of Engineers reported spending close to $ 10 million testing dredge materials in anticipation of a project to deepen the channel from 40 to 45 feet from Cape May to Camden.

That $311 million project has been stalled by environmental groups in Gloucester and Salem counties, where most of the spoils from the deepening project are slated to be dumped. The groups have challenged the validity of the Army Corps' testing procedures.

The Army Corps says its methods comply with standards set by state and federal environmental agencies.

Melissa Grimm, director of DRPA's port division, said filling the Riverwinds with river mud is "just one of many potential beneficial uses for dredge materials."

Transportation costs will come from an earlier commitment of $50 million by DRPA to the deepening project. It is not a new expenditure.

The bistate agency has vowed to come up with additional " beneficial uses" before it signs a final agreement to begin the Delaware deepening project.

Another project near Delaware City, Del., is also using dredge spoils, according to Thomas W. Groff, operations manager for the Philadelphia District of the Army Corps of Engineers. Recently, the Corps sold a private developer 1 million cubic yards of spoils for 75 cents per yard to be used on multiple construction sites.

Determining what to do with dredge spoils remains one of the Corps' biggest challenges, said Groff.

The 195-acre National Park site where the dredge spoils had been held is owned by the federal government since 1965. It contains about 2.2 million cubic yards of materials.