Processing contaminated dredged material from the Port of New York-New Jersey

Shipping activities in the Port of New York-New Jersey are currently threatened by restrictions on dredging of navigational channels and private berthing areas becaused of concerns about the environmental effects caused by ocean disposal of the dredged material. Current proposals for solutions to the problem include ocean disposal of uncontaminated material, use of confined disposal facilities (both upland facilities and containment islands), subaqueous barrow pits, and processing and treatment for contaminated materials. A project to produce a complete “treatment train” for processing and decontaminating dredged material is described. The work is divided into several phases: treatability studies of commercial and nonproprietary technologies at volumes of 19 liters (bench scale) and up to 19 m³ (pilot scale); specification of a treatment train; and implementation of a large-scale facility that can process 76,000–382,000 m³ of dredged material per year. The goal is to achieve operational status for the facility by the end of 1999.