conowingo dam dredging project pdf dnr final report

Northgate-Dutra Joint Venture appears to be a combined effort of the Dutra Group, headquartered in San Rafael, Calif., and Northgate Environmental Services, with offices in Frederick and California.Īn official at the Dutra Group said he couldn’t discuss the Conowingo project until the contract is finalized. Merkel said she could not answer specific questions about either company’s proposal because “the procurement is still active.” She could not say when the procurement process would be complete. A committee that reviewed the bids ranked Northgate-Dutra higher on the technical aspects and cost of its proposal. Northgate-Dutra Joint Venture was selected as the winner over Pennsylvania-based Mobile Dredging and Video Pipe, according to Sharon Merkel, a spokeswoman for MES. “Any time it rains and we have those gates open, the Coast Guard is on the marine radio every couple minutes warning about what’s floating down in the rivers,” said Zack Kelleher, the riverkeeper for the Sassafras, another bay tributary south of the Susquehanna.Just two companies ended up bidding on the contract for the test dredging project, according to the Maryland Environmental Service, an independent state agency that’s overseeing the project. So-called “scour events,” which churn up pollutants from Pennsylvania and New York trapped behind the dam and send them down the river. “If Maryland’s certification was upheld as valid - as it is - the funds outlined as necessary to make those vital reductions would be there, rather than passed off to folks in Baltimore and the farmers on the Shore,” Johnson said.Įven now, storms are causing significant problems for the bay, some of which, the environmentalists say, can be traced back to the dam on the Susquehanna, among the Chesapeake’s largest tributaries. Instead, cleanup costs associated with the pollution could fall to taxpayers, she said, all while Exelon profits from the waterway. When contacted by environmental groups, one company offered to dredge the dam hydraulically for $41 million a year, Evgeniadis said.īut without the requirements from Maryland’s water quality certification from 2018, that kind of investment from Exelon seems unlikely to occur, said Morgan Johnson, a staff attorney with Waterkeepers Chesapeake.

Conowingo dam dredging project pdf dnr final report