A simple definition of dredging is the subaqueous or underwater excavation of soils and rock. The process consists of four phases:
- excavation
- vertical transport
- horizontal transport
- placement or use of the material dredged.
From the beginning of civilization, people, equipment, materials, and commodities have been transported by water. To do this, the channel depths of many waterways needed to be increased to provide access to ports and harbors. Most major ports in the world require dredging at some time to enlarge and deepen access channels, waterways, and turning basins, and to provide appropriate water depths along waterside facilities. These channels often require frequent and regular maintenance dredging. In the case of fluvial navigation, dredging is also required to construct and maintain vital links to inland ports and facilities.
As population density along the coastlines and riverbanks increases, dredging is also used for to protect against flooding and erosion, as well as to create recreational facilities like beaches through sand nourishment.
Dredging is also used for the installation of energy facilities such as offshore drilling platforms and oil and gas pipelines and the construction of wind farms in the water. Dredging can also be used to recover minerals, gems, precious metals, and fertilizers, or the removal of overlying material to reach such deposits.
Dredging can also provide construction materials such as sand, gravel, shell and clay, or provide landfills, including the construction of industrial and residential areas, highways, dams, airports, causeways and habitats for birds and other forms of wildlife.
Another more recent use of dredging is to remove or remediate subaqueous pollutants and improve water quality and sediment habitats. This type of dredging operation is used as a means to clean-up contaminated waterways. Environmental dredging is the removal of contaminated sediments from a water body for purposes of sediment remediation.
contributed by: Craig Vogt
In order to understand the importance of dredging, one must be aware of the many applications that involve dredging. Dredges are used for numerous processes including; waterway navigation, mining, aquaculture, environmental, land restoration, land development and many other applications. While these categories are broad in nature, we should explore them in detail to educate the public on what dredges really do. When we discuss an economy, we can either think in terms of a global economy, a country’s economy, a state’s economy, or more specific, an economy on a local level and how they can interact with each other. We must also define what constitutes a dredge in order to understand the complete effects of dredges on the economy. As related to this paper, dredges will be defined in two basic categories; hydraulic and mechanical. Hydraulic dredges are defined as a dredge utilizing a pumping system that uses water as its means of transportation, while mechanical dredges are defined as a dredge that uses mechanical means of removal of the dredge material and requires a secondary means of transportation.
The bottom line is that the world has grown economically, scientifically and technologically due to a global education and trade exchange that was initially created through our port systems. Without ports there would be no way of effectively trading with multiple nations because of geographical limitations and transportation restrictions. We would revert back to a system of bartering and each nation would only fulfill the needs required by that particular nation or nations that could trade through over-land transport systems. But this balance of trade would be insignificant compare to transport over waterways, easily the most economical and effective way to trade. In order for the dredging industry to be graciously accepted by the majority of all people, we need to promote through education and awareness the effects that dredging has on the global economy.
I believe that dredging is a good thing because one of the projects a company did was to save an endangered species of sturgeon.
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