More Bellingham waterfront work begins to improve system that ‘was not sustainable’
The waterfront will see an uptick in activity for the next several weeks with a major dredging project.
Dredging of the Squalicum Waterway near Bellingham Cold Storage is expected to start this week. It’ll take approximately 45 days to remove about 381,000 tons of material from the channel. The sediment will then be put on barges and taken to Puget Sound open water disposal sites, said Mike Hogan, spokesman for the Port of Bellingham.
Hogan said 2004 was the last time maintenance dredging was done in that area. The sediment buildup from the Nooksack River was starting to create a navigation hazard to commercial vessels loading and off-loading cargo.
Bellingham Cold Storage President Doug Thomas said the buildup created a situation where some vessels had to unload product onto a floating barge in the middle of Bellingham Bay.
“This system was not sustainable, and the economic development potential of our working waterfront has been compromised by increasing limitations in functionality within the Squalicum waterway,” Thomas said in a news release.
The port worked with Bellingham Cold Storage to secure $2.2 million in federal funding for the dredging. It also received support from the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association and the state of Washington.
Curtin Maritime of Long Beach, California, is the contractor, hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
