CORPS ASSISTS BULLIES: Dredging Projects Provide Seemingly Endless Supply of Sand to Kick into 98-pound Weaklings’ Faces
Story and photos by Greg Fuderer
 With the shoreline of Marina del Rey in the background, project manager Jim Fields (center) has a pilot house discussion with the contractor about dredging progress at the harbor’s entrance channel. Following completion of this project, Megan-Renee sailed south to Oceanside for the start of that harbor’s annual dredging. The self-made He-Man of comic book back page fame earned the respect of millions, and probably a good bit of change, by taking what he had been given, working hard and creating something better. Initially on the flying-sand end of a bully’s aggression, Atlas developed a plan and some muscle, and in the end he got the girl. Navigational dredging isn’t quite that sexy. While California’s shoreline is still filled with sand, big-muscled fellows and pretty, tanned girls lying on beach towels, without the Corps’ navigational dredging program, that would be a rare, if not extinct, sight along much of the state’s coast. Megan-Renee sits calmly in the water at Marina del Rey. For her, working in the middle of winter in Southern California isn’t so bad. Beachgoers, working boats, small pleasure craft and gleaming yachts don’t distract her. Cool water and occasional swells don’t deter her from her task. She’s been about 100 or so feet offshore for more than a month. She’s 694 tons of dipper dredge working seven days a week, 24-hours a day. And she is sexy. Scoop the sand. Swing the bucket. Drop the load. On a sunny February morning, Jim Fields stands at the end of the Marina del Rey jetty.  Megan-Renee dredges at Marina del Rey as beachgoers enjoy a warm Southern California winter morning. Sand removed from the entrance channel is placed close to the shore at nearby Los Angeles International Airport to allow wave action to push it back up on the beach.
Fields watches Megan-Renee scoop another 11 or so cubic meters of sand and drop it in the scow tethered alongside. When the scow nears its roughly 1,150 cubic meter capacity, a tug boat will haul it to a nearshore placement area about two miles to the south. There, as jets from nearby Los Angeles International Airport soar overhead, the scow will split open down the middle, drop the sand and return to the entrance channel to resume the task of removing 255,000 cubic meters of material at the mouth of the nation’s largest man-made marina. Scoop the sand. Swing the bucket. Drop the load. “The material we’re dredging now is all clean sand,” Fields said. “We place it near the shore, and wave action will eventually return it to the beach.” Over time, the ocean pushes the sand back up onto the beach. The added sand makes the beach wider and increases its ability to withstand constant pounding by waves, especially during winter months and occasional storms. Being able to deposit the sand at a near-shore placement area also reduces the round-trip distance of the tug-scow combo, thereby decreasing the time and cost required to complete the project. The process also reduces adverse impacts on limited off-shore disposal sites. But finding anyplace to put dredged sand isn’t easy. “We have very strict environmental constraints on the West Coast,” Fields said. “The acceptable contamination levels are lower here than elsewhere, so we’re more limited in where we can place the material we dredge. There’s a growing concern for contaminants in a marine environment.”  Heavy equipment pushes sand at the discharge outlet in order to create a retention barrier. In a matter of days, the sun will dry and bleach the sand, making the additional width and protection unnoticeable.
“We have three types of harbors that we maintain,” Fields said. “Some require little maintenance, like Mission Bay, Dana Point and Port Hueneme. Because of their configuration and location, they don’t fill up much. Some harbors are heavily impacted, like Ventura, Santa Barbara and Morro Bay. They fill with material very quickly, and we dredge 100,000 to 400,000 cubic yards from each of those ports annually.”
Monitoring the progress from the end of the jetty, Fields continued, “Marina del Rey and some others like Newport Bay, Channel Islands and the ports at LA and Long Beach, fall in the middle. They require routine maintenance, but usually don’t involve significant quantities.” About 100 miles south of Marina del Rey, in northern San Diego County, lies Oceanside Harbor, another port that needs annual dredging. Oceanside is a relatively small harbor that serves recreational, commercial and military customers. When the annual dredging project began in April, Megan-Renee would scoop material from the channel, load the scow and wait for the next one to pull alongside to continue the process. In a calm location under normal conditions, that equipment performs quite well. When the weather and the seas are not as cooperative, the task is more difficult and the results less predictable. In further proof of Murphy’s Law, that’s what happened at Oceanside. Wave action created an unproductive and, at times, unsafe work environment. After much deliberation, completion of the channel dredging was postponed until H. R. Morris arrived in mid-August.
 Biologist Geoff Daley takes water samples during dredging operations at the entrance channel to Oceanside Harbor. The tests take measurements throughout the water column adjacent to the dredge and just offshore from the dredged material discharge on the beach about two miles from the dredge. The tests ensure compliance with environmental standards to limit impact on birds, fish and other wildlife, and aquatic vegetation.
Seven days a week, 24 hours a day. As the final 55,000 cubic meters of sand makes the journey through the pipe, the slurry emerges onto the beach, where the sun transforms it from a dark wet channel bottom into bright, warm beach sand. Sitting high above the water in Morris’s control room, leverman Ben Steevens operates the cutter head. Steevens sits in a Captain Kirk-like chair, amid dials, readouts, gauges and computer monitors with graphical transverse images of the cutter head, the ocean floor, Morris’s orientation, ocean depth, quantity of material being dredged, rate of flow. When the area within the cutter’s range has reached the authorized dredging depth, the leverman hoists in and pays out cables to nearby anchors to reposition Morris and start the process anew.
“There used to be only a couple of levers that they’d have to pull,” said Morris’s captain, Fred Franks. A lot has changed since Steevens started the job more than 30 years ago. And still, some things stay the same.
Seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Last year, this year, next year. So while Atlas might still get the girl, it’s only because Megan-Renee, Morris and Fields are doing the heavy lifting. |
