The feds are trying to figure out where to put 50 million cubic yards of ocean floor dirt.
By federal law, the shipping lanes of New York and New Jersey Harbor must be deep enough for large cargo ships. To maintain a depth of around 50 feet, the harbor requires constant dredging from the ocean floor. That dirt is dumped in an 18-square-mile patch of ocean nearly nine miles south of the Rockaways.
But that stretch of submerged landfill is nearly at capacity. And now, the Army Corps of Engineers is looking for a new site to dump the dirt — and it’s a surprisingly complex task.
“ I’s a busy place. It’s full of shipping, fishing habitat, cultural resources,” Lindsay Adamczyk, a scientist with the EPA’s regional office, said in a public briefing last week. “In thinking about a potential dredge material management site, we would want to minimize any potential conflict with these current existing uses of the ocean.”
The Army Corps of Engineers estimated that it will dig up about 50 million cubic yards of seabed over the next 20 years .
The feds are considering three sites for relocating ocean dirt in the New York Bight — a geological region along the Atlantic coast from Cape May, New Jersey to Montauk. Commercial fishing, offshore wind, shipwrecks, artificial reefs, submarine cables and even a few unexploded ordinance areas near former military bases make managing navigation in the area tricky.
The EPA produced maps showing where the dredged material could be dropped. The sites had to be within 40 miles of the harbor to be economically feasible. The site also had to be deeper than 75 feet, meaning more than five miles from shore. Navigation channels and anchorage areas were off limits, as well as locations designated for wind farms or submerged cables.
Fishing holes, however, were not off limits. The three proposed dumping areas are places where commercial fishers harvest scallops, herring, clams and squid.
“Obviously more material that goes out and is put on new sites becomes problematic for us because it’s basically fishing ground that historically we’ve been able to fish that we will now lose,” said Scot Mackey, an official with the Garden State Seafood Association. “We are concerned about all of the structure that is going out there and impacting our fishing grounds.”
The feds said they are taking the commercial fishing industry’s concerns into account.
Two areas proposed for dumping are located about 6.5 miles and 13 miles, respectively, east of Long Branch, New Jersey. The third site is roughly 6.5 miles south of the Rockaways. The feds are also considering adding more to the existing site located about 4 miles east of Highlands, New Jersey.
The dredged material is a mixture of rock, mixed till, clay, silt and sand. Over the next two decades, more than half of the excavated sediment will come from maintenance projects, including clearing the shipping lane from Rockaway to Sandy Hook. Federal officials said they’re considering using some hard rock from the site for artificial reefs.
Dredged material has previously been used around New York and New Jersey to cap contaminated brownfields and landfills. It’s also used to restore waterfront damaged by storms, restore beaches or improve wetlands. The Army Corps is planning to use dredged material in the development of two golf courses in New Jersey.
New York’s port is the second largest in the United States. According to the Port Authority, cargo ships moved nearly 9 million cargo containers in 2024, an increase of more than 10% from the previous year. More than $200 billion in goods pass through the port annually.
Maintaining that economic activity requires regular maintenance of 240 miles of channels and 1 million linear feet of berths in the port. Dredgers must clear sediment from rivers and tributaries that flow into the Bight.
Between 2004 and 2014, roughly 50 million cubic yards were dredged in the area by the Army Corps of Engineers. The agency plans to continue excavating to maintain a depth of 55 feet for large cargo ships. The Army Corps said dredged sediment is tested for toxicity before being relocated.
The current dumping site is referred to as a historic area remediation site, or HARS, and was polluted from the late 1800s to 1992. Those waters served as a dump that includes petroleum products, radioactive material, heavy metals, chemicals and construction debris, according to the Academy of Sciences.
The site is remediated with more than three feet of dredged ocean material. The zone is expected to reach capacity by September 2026.
“These features [remediation sites] have been extensively colonized by a variety of organisms, and we’ve inadvertently created habitat and structure for fish,” EPA scientist Jordan Welnetz said. “You can see corals, sponges, other encrusting organisms, some fish, and it appears to have provided good quality habitat.”
The public can send comments and inquiries to [email protected] through July 14. The agencies will release a draft environmental report in September with the final expected by the end of the year.
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