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  • June

    The Essayons travelled north to the Corps’ Alaska District, to dredge the Cook Inlet Navigation Channel. A sudden surge of shoal material in the past two years reduced depths and affected navigation in the channel, which is the only Coast Guard marked route for all cargo and fuel ships supplying the Port of Anchorage.

    Big Bertha heads to Benson Beach, battles erosion

    Off the coast of Oregon, Big Bertha moves in the water, inching toward land. Bertha, as her government creators to refer to it, is the result of three years of inter-agency planning. Her architects; some of whom work for the Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; conscripted half of Portland District’s dredge fleet to scrape the river bottom and collect what was to become Bertha: a migrating mound of sand.

  • July

    Portland District’s dredge Essayons and its crew spent part of their summer in Alaska, dredging in the Cook Inlet navigation channel about six miles from Anchorage. The federal navigation channel was constructed in 2000 and is essential to ship traffic entering and leaving the Port of Anchorage. Before the Essayons arrived, sand in the channel reduced depths by eight to ten feet above the authorized depth. The ship removed more than two and a half million cubic yards of material, nearly 300,000 truck loads, from the navigation channel in just 33 days. The Essayons is one of only two Corps-owned dredges on the West Coast. The ship was built in 1983 and designed to dredge anywhere in the world. Its work typically takes it from Hawaii to the Pacific Northwest to Alaska. Getting the Essayons to Alaska for the 2013 season required considerable team effort across several Corps districts.

    Essayons dredges Alaskan channel

    Portland District's dredge Essayons spent some of its summer dredging the Cook Inlet navigation channel, which is about six miles from Anchorage, Alaska.