Cottrell Contracting Corp. of Chesapeake (VA) has won a $7.9 million contract for dredging and sand stockpiling at Poplar Island.
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District, the work will be performed in Tilghman, Maryland, with an estimated completion date of January 28, 2019.
The project includes hydraulic dredging of up to 2.2 million cubic yards of sand from the borrow area adjacent to the existing island and stockpiling the material within one of the project’s completed containment dikes.
Poplar Island, located in Talbot County in the mid–Chesapeake Bay, is the site where an innovative solution for dredged material management is resulting in the restoration of a once vanishing island. The island was reduced in size from approximately 1,100 acres, as recorded in 1847, to just 5 acres in 1993.
The loss of the island and its critical wildlife habitat has been reversed using clean dredged material from the Port of Baltimore’s approach channels. This process involves placing, shaping, and planting some 40 million cubic yards of dredged material within a dike constructed to approximate the 1847 footprint.
The first two phases of dike construction were completed by 2002, and dredged material placement began in 2001. In 2014, the project was authorized for a 575 acre expansion which began in 2016 and will increase the total project size to 1,715 acres, allowing for a project placement total of 68 million cubic yards of material.
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