Lake St. Clair Dredging

[Charlie]

Thanks for the links. Charlie

[Mr Link]

Each District seems to have their own way of storing these.


Chicago District

http://www.lrc.usace.army.mil/co-o/Survey.htm



Buffalo District

http://www.lrb.usace.army.mil/Survey_X_ ... 9data.html



New York District

http://www.nan.usace.army.mil/business/ ... ig/cdr.php

[Charlie]

Thanks for the link. The link only covers 3 states. Where would you find the other states like say New York? Thanks Charlie

[MichaelB]

Okay, that makes sense with the silt coming from the river. I guess I've just never seen it before. Thanks for the replies.

[Mr Link]

If it works, here is a link to the latest publicly accessible soundings, and Adobe Acrobat format.

http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/who/opera ... _st_clair/

Click on the numbers (or the sheet names below) to pull up each sheet of soundings. Green numbers indicate locations where the water is deeper than the project depth, Red is less than project depth.

Briefly looking at the sheets, it looks like the edges of the channel are caving in, or filling in. The center of the channel is plenty deep enough, but where there should be, say a 600 foot wide channel, its perhaps only 500 feet wide. I didn't see the actual project channel widths, but they are marked with solid black lines on the sounding sheets.

[charlie - soo]

My best guess would be between Lk. St. Clair Lt. 30 and Buoy 32 on the red side of the channel. This is where we dredged every other year when I worked on the Hopper Dredges for the Corp. We pumped out on the back side of Dickinson Island, across from Pearl Beach, near the upper end of the island. We were not allowed to dig anything east or north of the International border, in Canadian waters. We had to leave that shoaling for the Canadians to deal with.

[Andy S]

It is usually in the area of light 32

[MichaelB]

As posted on the news forum of 4 May 2010, a contract has been awarded to dredge Lake St. Clair.

It was stated in the posted article that, “Removal of shoals from the navigation channel will keep it viable for ships transporting millions of dollars worth of raw materials such as coal, iron ore and limestone.”

I am wondering where these shoals might be. As a long term boater on Lake St. Clair, I have spent a lot of time in or near the shipping channel from the northern most part near the short cut to the southern most part near Belle Isle. In every reading I have found from the depth sounder on my 28 foot Sea Ray, the channel is well beyond anything that might be considered datum... including what I have discovered this year with the excursions I've taken so far.

Where might this shoaling be taking place? Maybe my depth sounder is not calibrated properly? But I have never seen anything in the shipping channel that is less than 30 feet.