June 10, 2014 — Progress is on schedule with the Miami Harbor deepening and widening project, including the successful construction of artificial reefs and relocation of about a thousand healthy corals.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, and its contractors are at the 35 percent completion mark, with more than one million cubic yards of material safely removed from the federal channel and the majority of mitigation construction completed.
Operations in the outer channel, which began in November 2013, calls for dredging approximately 2.1 million cubic yards of material from the harbor entrance channel, relocating coral, creating artificial reef, and constructing seagrass mitigation sites. The Corps estimates completing the outer channel construction by November 2014. This work will bring the entrance channel depth to 52 feet, plus one foot allowable over-depth, and widen the outermost portion of the entrance channel to 800 feet. Additionally, the project includes deepening and widening the inner channel, with full project completion scheduled for July 2015.
The Corps’ contractor, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company, are constructing approximately ten acres of artificial reefs and divers and scientists have already transplanted healthy corals greater than 25 centimeters and more than 700 healthy corals more than 10 centimeters in size from the project area to adjacent natural reef tracts and onto a portion of the newly created artificial reefs. Divers carefully harvested the corals from the channel’s edges, as collecting from the channel bottom was too dangerous in the busy port.