The Port of New Bedford in Massachusetts is a deepwater commercial port that is approximately nine nautical miles from the Cape Cod shipping canal and 83 miles south of Boston. With a rich history of being one of the top ports in the United States for fishing fleets and related processing facilities, the designated port area is also growing as a major cargo transport hub for the region.

A maintenance dredging project for the port was awarded to Burnham Associates Inc., and involved the removal of 104,000 cubic yards of material from the New Bedford Harbor Federal Channel to deepen it to 29 feet. To support the project, a large-capacity environmental clamshell bucket from Atlas-SSI was selected due to its reliability of performance and design to safely handle contaminated material. A major concern for the project was that the dredged material potentially contained PCB contaminants and due to this risk, numerous safeguard were put in place by the lead contractor, including the use of an Atlas-SSI clamshell bucket which featured a fully enclosed design. As material was excavated by the clamshell bucket, it was held for 12 hours before being disposed of in the upper harbor. Atlas-SSI has designed and manufactured fully enclosed environmental clamshell buckets for difficult projects around the world. Customers can select from standard clamshell bucket designs or have a fully customized clamshell bucket built by Atlas-SSI to meet their specific needs.

 

Massachusetts