Dredging will begin soon in the St. Joseph harbor thanks to an emergency allocation of $500,000 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It was requested by Congressman Fred Upton, who tells WSJM News the corps hadn’t been planning to dredge due to it being done last year. But wouldn’t high levels in the Great Lakes make dredging unnecessary this year? Upton says the level in Lake Michigan is down about a foot and a half since last year’s high.
“When that lake level dropped, then you had silt from the Paw Paw River and the St. Joe, it really lodged against the railroad bridge and actually did a little shoaling along the north pier at the end of the pier,” Upton said. “That was going to be OK for the lake carriers. They could have pushed through that. But it was by the railroad bridge that the real issue lies.”
Upton says he was told by the operators of freighters they couldn’t have gotten past the railroad bridge with large shipments of construction materials for the US-31 to I-94 construction project. With dredging now on the schedule, the construction project will not be disrupted.
