By Jacob Geiger
Portsmouth-based ship-repair company Earl Industries has filed a request to dredge a deeper channel around its piers on the Elizabeth River.
Jerry Miller, the company's president, said the dredging is needed to allow the Navy's San Antonio-class troop transport ships to tie up at the company's docks. The dredging is designed to give tugboats more maneuvering space when parking ships at the piers. Earl Industries has bid on a contract to do work on the San Antonio-class ships.
The Navy expects to build about 10 ships in the San Antonio class. The new, high-tech style of ship needs fewer crew members. The first vessel in the class came in $840 million over budget, failed its sea trials and needed extensive repair work.
The dredging request, filed with the Army Corps of Engineers, will now go through a 30-day public
comment period, said John Evans, an environmental scientist with the corps' regulatory office. The Department of Environmental Quality also will need to give approval after testing the water quality and sediment in the dredging area, and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission must approve the project, since the river bottom is state-owned.
Miller said that, if the approval process goes smoothly, he hopes the dredging can take place early in 2009. He said the shipyard will be too full until then to do any dredging work.
The dredged material would be deposited at Craney Island.
Ed Giles, who lives in the Scott s Creek neighborhood of Portsmouth, said the dredging probably wouldn't affect the shipyard's neighbors. He said local residents generally have a good working relationship with the company.
"Jerry Miller has met personally with us many times," Giles said. "They're very neighborly."
Jacob Geiger, (757) 446-2643, jacob.geiger@pilotonline.com
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Earl Industries Part of the E-Warrior Tribe
The company seeking to obtain a permit to remove sediments to accommodate larger classes of vessels is an innovative company with respect to environmental matters. Since they lack vessel lifting structures at this point in time, some work is restricted but many toxic poisons and pollutants are avoided and not released to the river. No doubt the neighbors do not have a problem with this company's industrial activities, seemingly because the upper management will not accept less than complete conformance with community need and environmental matters. Instead of disputing every regulatory notion, the company acts to make their operation environmentally more sound. Sadly, there are still a couple of operations where current eco-thinking remains mired in the past along with their contaminated sediments free-flowing from the unpaved marine railways and waterfront sites. Witho
Dredging With Restoration!
The State should consider as part of the permit approval, to restore sediment build up in Saint Julian's Creek which has been negelcted for decades after the Army Corps allowed the demolition of a train bridge back in the 1950's. The bridge was not completely removed and serves as a choke point for the Creek and does not allow complete flushing of the Creek on the out going tide. As a result, our neighborhood storm water drains are filled with mud and during heavy rains, back up and flood our streets.
Any dredging project approved should always include restoration of local imparied waters.
Local dredging company
I hope the work goes to a local dredging company like Norfolk Dredging. It will keep more jobs here at home. They are a very sound and environmentally aware company that has a great record up and down the east coast.