Work on an almost $1 million effort to dredge Snug Harbor began this week.
The operation is pretty simple: An excavator with a long arm scoops mud from the floor of the lagoon, swivels and dumps it on a barge. The material is then transported across the channel to a site underneath the Ninth Street Bridge.
City Council in August awarded a $937,900 contract to Wickberg Marine Contracting of Belford, N.J. to complete the job at Snug Harbor, a lagoon between Eighth and Ninth streets that has no water at low tide.
Equipment arrived earlier this month, but the contractor had to wait for final approvals from state regulators before work could begin.
An estimated 14,000 cubic yards of material will be removed to make Snug Harbor six feet deeper from the Bay Avenue bulkhead to a 150-square-foot box outside the mouth of the lagoon (leading to the channel).
Because the disposal site under the bridge has only 8,600 cubic yards of capacity, the contractor will haul material away by truck to the Wildwood landfill to make room to complete the project.
The contractor will be required to dig twice to remove material that fills in immediately.
Read more: A Costly Quest to Unclog Ocean City Lagoons and Bayside.
