"County officials seek to push Delaware River dredging plan"

By Peter Hall, Intelligencer, April 15, 2010:

The Bucks County commissioners will join the county redevelopment authority in an effort to persuade the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to support dredging to maintain the Delaware River shipping channel from Philadelphia to Trenton.


Redevelopment authority director Bob White said the NJDEP has refused to provide space to place material dredged from the shipping channel that serves the Port of Bucks County at the former U.S. Steel site in Falls.

White asked the commissioners last week to join the authority by sending a letter to NJDEP Commissioner Robert Martin, urging him to make sites available for the dredge material. The commissioners agreed to send a letter.

County Commissioner Chairman Charley Martin said the channel is a crucial part of the plan to redevelop the U.S. Steel land. The availability of a deep water port is attractive to businesses that need to move large quantities of material and finished products easily, he said.

Without sites to place dredge material, the Army Corps of Engineers will not be able to perform maintenance on the channel to ensure it is deep enough for ocean-going vessels to safely navigate, White said. The channel is maintained at a depth of 40 feet.

Dredging to maintain the Philadelphia-to-Trenton channel is separate from the Army Corps project to deepen the channel from the Delaware Bay to Philadelphia, White said. That project is mired in legal challenges by environmentalists, and decisions from federal judges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are pending.

The availability of dredge spoil sites is crucial to the development of a turning basin at the former U.S. Steel site that would allow ships to turn before heading south toward Philadelphia and the Atlantic Ocean. Above the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia, the river channel is too narrow to allow most oceangoing ships to make a 180-degree turn, White said.

While a turning basin exists near the Falls ports, it is several feet shallower than the channel, White said. . . .