Hydraulic dredges are a barge designed to float with various means of propulsion including cables, walking spuds, and paddle wheels. The idea is to extend the beach by several hundred feet and build a dune 22 feet high. What is a dredge How does a dredge work JanuA cutterhead hydraulic dredge is a machine designed to pump sediment from a body of water. 'Bring it into a location where we hook up to a buoy and then the sand is pumped out pipelines to the beach,' Steve O'Hara of Great Lakes Dredge & Dock said.Ī small army of bulldozers and other heavy equipment move the sand around. 'Lowers some drag arms, literally sucks up the sand with water, stores it in the hopper and then transports it back to the pump,' Lt Col. They drop 30 inch suction pipes from either side of the ship that claw through the ocean floor at what's called a 'borrow site.' Working with the US Army Corps of engineers, crews from the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company work around the clock. Well, there's a lot that goes behind it, a lot of engineering, a lot of science goes behind it,' NJDEP Commissioner Bob Martin said. 'It sounds easy: we're going to pump sand on to the beach.

It is one of three vessels currently working on the massive $138 million project to build berms and dunes on LBI, part of the overall plan to protect the entire Jersey coast from hurricane and storm damage.

3 Sand is often used in manufacturing, for example as an abrasive or in concrete. That's the end result of dredging that beach-goers typically see.Īction News had the chance to get on board the dredge ship Liberty Island off the coast of Long Beach Island to see how the entire process works. Sand mining is the extraction of sand, mainly through an open pit (or sand pit) 1 failed verification 2 but sometimes mined from beaches and inland dunes or dredged from ocean and river beds. Welcome aboard the dredge ship Liberty Island.īEACH HAVEN PARK, N.J.

How does a sand dredge work