The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has begun a US$9.6 million dredging project on the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal in Sussex County, Delaware.
The work will cover the stretch from the Route 9 bridge to the canal entrance at Rehoboth Bay, removing about 89,000 cubic yards (68,000 cubic metres) of sediment, and is expected to continue through March 2027. Cottrel Contracting Corporation of Chesapeake, Virginia, received the contract.
The USACE said the material will be moved to two placement sites in the canal’s northern section using a hydraulic dredger together with booster pumps. The work spans 8.24 miles (13.3 kilometres) of the 50-foot (15-metre) wide navigation channel.
The USACE said crews in remote sections will work around the clock, every day of the week. In developed areas near the canal, operations will run from 07:00 to 19:00 each day.
The canal is managed by the USACE under its Inland Waterway from Rehoboth Bay to Delaware Bay project and serves as a federal navigation channel for shallow-draught vessels. Users include commercial and recreational boaters, along with research vessels and the Delaware Bay and River Cooperative, which provides oil spill emergency response and cleanup in the Delaware River and Bay.
In an application submitted in January, the USACE proposed other beneficial uses for dredged material: depositing clean sand along the southern and eastern shores of Thompson Island and putting sediment into an unused lagoon at the Wolfe Neck Regional Wastewater Facility.
The current work comes after a separate 2024 dredging project on the canal’s northern stretch, from Roosevelt Inlet to the Route 9 bridge. That effort lasted five months, cost US$1.8 million and moved roughly 40,000 cubic yards (31,000 cubic metres) of sediment.
Before the 2024 work, the canal had not been dredged since 2002.
