How Do You Dredge a River?

So you want to know what’s happening with the river dredging operation at GM’s riverfront, but perhaps you don’t want to read the big document from the Department of Environmental Conservation...

Here’s help from Village Administrator Anthony Giaccio on what exactly is happening down there now and for some weeks to come.

The dredging, or replacement of some 1,000 yards of potentially contaminated soil in the river from the old General Motors yard, has not begun yet. What the very dramatic looking cranes are doing, said Giaccio, are doing the preliminary protective work: installing posts, netting and sheathing.

Metal sheets will protect the edge of the GM property, basically a rock barricade adjacent to the bulkhead at the foot of Ichabod’s Landing, from collapsing when workers start scooping out dirt from the river bottom. The big posts they are installing is meant to hold up netting which will do the same protective work.

The workers are setting up red containers where they will be depositing the removed soil. Dredging is slated to begin next week and continue for the next three to four weeks through December. This will be followed, said Giaccio, by another few weeks of “dismantling” which will take the job to completion in mid-January. Or that, he said, is at least the goal.

“It did get pushed back a week because of the Hurricane,” he said. If we encounter a snowstorm along the way however, that probably won’t pose any issue. Unless the river is frozen solid, the work should continue as planned.

As the dirt gets removed it will be tested on site by the DEC “to determine whether they can use it on site,” Giaccio said. If the dirt meets certain certification standards, it could potentially be used as fill in the development to come.

The tall cranes will come into use again in the end of the work to lift and remove the metal sheeting. Until then, the cranes will rest as the scooping operation takes us through the holidays.

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