“This is a fix that happens relatively quickly” compared to land-based controls, said Deni Chambers, president of Northgate Environmental Management, which is partnering with Restoration Systems on the proposal. Dredging has long been considered an option too expensive to reasonably pursue, and many environmentalists contend the money is better spent elsewhere.ĭredging proponents say earlier cost estimates were dramatically overstated and that costs for other means of pollution reduction have been underestimated- and those alternatives, unlike dredging, would take years to produce results. The company says that the dredging would be paid for by selling water quality credits to others who need to offset the nutrient pollution they are generating elsewhere. “We’re fixing the real problem for them, the sediment accumulation, and the second thing is we’re doing it in the most cost-effective way.”
“We’re giving the jurisdictions a two-fer,” said Jeff Corbin, director of environmental policy and water markets with Restoration Systems, a North Carolina-based firm that offers market-based solutions to environmental problems and is a principal partner in Conowingo Systems. And they hope to start by the end of this year. In December, the company unveiled a proposal to dredge as much as 20 million cubic yards of sediment - enough, it says, to fill the Great Pyramids of Giza more than six times. More pollution has been sweeping past the Conowingo Dam since its reservoir filled with sediment a decade ago, allowing millions of pounds of nutrient pollution to wash downstream to the Chesapeake Bay and creating a costly cleanup problem.īut, some say they have - literally - dredged up a solution.Ī new corporation, Conowingo Systems, proposes to excavate and remove some of the sediment building up behind the 94-foot-high dam on the Susquehanna River, thereby restoring its capacity to trap a portion of the pollution that would otherwise enter the Bay. Bay Journal: Can Chesapeake Bay Region Dredge Its Way Out Of Conowingo Dam Problem?īy Karl Blankenship, Chesapeake Bay Journal
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