It’s a day that, at times, seemed like it might never arrive.
After almost five years of pushing to have local channels of the Fraser River cleared of silt, the first dredgers will set to work in Ladner Harbour on Monday.
With all the needed permits in place, Vancouver Pile Driving will get to work on the first phase of the project.
The dredging of the Fraser used to be handled by the federal government, however, the secondary channels have not been cleared in over a decade and the build up is causing problems.
Until 1998, dredging of all channels was a federal responsibility. In 1999, the port authority took over dredging only the main navigational channel. Since then, silt has been building up in the many secondary channels.
The LSG has been working to get some of the local secondary channels of the river dredged since 2009, as the silt continued to pile up, wreaking havoc on float homes and making some of the channels impassable during low tides.
In late 2012, the group finally saw some success with the announcement of a $10-million project to dredge the secondary channels in the Fraser River in Ladner and Steveston.
The first channel to be cleared stretches from where the Ladner Reach and Ladner Harbour channels meet east to the Elliot Street wharf. The first phase of work, which will remove about 210,000 cubic metres from the bottom of the river, will continue for about seven weeks. The material will be moved by barge to Point Grey for disposal.
Work will resume after the freshet in July and continue until November.
The $10 million project is a collaboration between Port Metro Vancouver, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, the Corporation of Delta and the City of Richmond. The project is also supposed to include funds for maintenance dredging for up to the next 10 years.
