There, the enormous freighters will load crude oil, piped from the shale field of Texas, for sale on foreign markets.

The $218 million canal expansion will allow the world’s largest class of ships to dock at the Seahawk Oil Terminal, owned by Max Midstream, which is partially financing the project. “Regardless of the amount of contamination that we find, it will all be removed before dredging work commences,” said Ramon Roman-Sanchez from the corps’ regional planning and environmental center. Tuesday’s presentation underlined the corps’s resolve to proceed with the canal’s expansion, even if tests reveal that mercury still lies on the bay floor. The bay floor was designated a Superfund site in the 1990s, and a federally mandated cleanup removed most of it in the 2000s. This area of the bay, which lies midway between Galveston and Corpus Christi, was once covered in mercury, a metallic neurotoxin dumped by a now-shuttered Alcoa aluminum plant in the 1960s and ‘70s. The move followed years of complaints and a lawsuit by environmental groups arguing that the corps had inadequately tested for toxic materials settled on the floor of the shallow bay. The corps first approved the channel project in 2020 but withdrew that decision in a court filing last December, acknowledging a need for more environmental studies.

The project calls for dredging and expanding a 27-mile stretch of the canal to make way for larger tankers carrying oil from Texas for export. Army Corps of Engineers outlined a $2.8 million effort to test the bay floor at the site and order the removal of any contaminants identified so that the Matagorda Bay ship channel project can move forward. In a presentation Tuesday night in a hotel conference room here, officials from the U.S. Sign up for their newsletter here. įederal authorities have outlined a path forward for controversial plans to dredge a canal for oil tankers through a Superfund site on the Texas coast despite persistent environmental concerns. This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment.

How to drag a dredge in a small canal