Little Palm Island Restoration

C&M Dredging performed an environmental restoration dredging project to reverse impacts caused by hurricane damage to an island resort in the Florida Keys. Hurricane-force winds and tidal surges had filled in a canal and basin system that was in place for barges and vessels that serviced the island resort daily.

The difficulty was that the project site was on an island 3 miles from the mainland. All equipment and personnel had to be transported to the site daily. Also, the permit required all the material to be dredged hydraulically and dewatered without violating turbidity requirements.

C&M Dredging proposed and implemented a plan to meet the project needs by constructing a sectional barge at the project site that would hold a geotextile tube and chemical treatment system, serving as a remote, floating dewatering site.

We used a compact, shallow-draft hydraulic dredge to perform the work in the canals and basin. Every couple of days, we transported the material contained in the geotextile tube on the barge 3 miles back to the mainland, and a new bag was installed and transported back to the island.

C&M also worked with local resources to arrange for the material’s offloading and transport to another site for separation, disposal, or beneficial reuse.

This project required careful planning, coordination, and execution, as well as out-of-the-box thinking on the part of the project team at C&M Dredging. We completed the project successfully, working with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to ensure all marine benthic resources were protected and the project owners’ needs were met.