Ship-Repair Firm Files Dredging Request
By Jacob Geiger – The Virginian-Pilot
Portsmouth-based ship-repair company Earl Industries has filed a request to dredge a deeper channel around its piers on the Elizabeth River.
Jerry Miller, the company’s president, said the dredging is needed to allow the Navy’s San Antonio-class troop transport ships to tie up at the company’s docks. The dredging is designed to give tugboats more maneuvering space when parking ships at the piers. Earl Industries has bid on a contract to do work on the San Antonio-class ships.
The Navy expects to build about 10 ships in the San Antonio class. The new, high-tech style of ship needs fewer crew members. The first vessel in the class came in $840 million over budget, failed its sea trials and needed extensive repair work.
The dredging request, filed with the Army Corps of Engineers, will now go through a 30-day public comment period, said John Evans, an environmental scientist with the corps’ regulatory office. The Department of Environmental Quality also will need to give approval after testing the water quality and sediment in the dredging area, and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission must approve the project, since the river bottom is state-owned.
Miller said that, if the approval process goes smoothly, he hopes the dredging can take place early in 2009. He said the shipyard will be too full until then to do any dredging work.
The dredged material would be deposited at Craney Island.
Ed Giles, who lives in the Scotts Creek neighborhood of Portsmouth, said the dredging probably wouldn’t affect the shipyard’s neighbors. He said local residents generally have a good working relationship with the company.
“Jerry Miller has met personally with us many times,” Giles said. “They’re very neighborly.”
