Corps of Engineers set to dredge St. Paul Boat Harbor

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, will begin dredging the St. Paul, Minnesota, Small Boat Harbor this week.

The Corps’ contractor, LS Marine Inc., from Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, is scheduled to use a mechanical dredging operation that includes an excavator sitting on a barge to remove nearly 21,000 cubic yards of dredged material from the harbor. Corps officials anticipate dredging the harbor to a depth of six feet. The dredging operation should last around three weeks. The boat harbor was last dredged in 2018.

Once removed from the harbor, the material will be transferred via barge to the Southport placement site, downstream of the St. Paul Downtown Airport. The city of St. Paul, as the non-federal sponsor for the harbor, is required to make arrangements for material placement.

The St. Paul District navigation program provides a safe, reliable, cost-effective and environmentally sustainable waterborne transportation system on the Upper Mississippi River for the movement of commercial goods and for national security needs. To do this, the district maintains a 9-foot navigation channel and 13 locks and dams from Minneapolis to Guttenberg, Iowa. Keeping this system open is vital to the nation’s economy.

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