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I finally chose a cutter suction dredge over a trailing one for a river project | Dredge Operators - SMM Buzz

I finally chose a cutter suction dredge over a trailing one for a river project

Had to pick between a cutter suction and a trailing suction hopper dredge for clearing out silt on the Mississippi near St. Louis last month. Went with the cutter because the channel was too narrow for the trailing setup to swing around. Worked great for the first 2 weeks but the cutter head kept getting clogged with tree roots. Anybody here run into that issue on river jobs or should I have gone with the trailing rig?

3 comments

3 Comments

emery_young132mo ago

Actually, look at it from the permit angle. Nobody talks about that. Out on the Missouri we had to pick a dredge type based on what the EPA would let us do with the spoils. Cutter suction uses a pipeline to pump material straight to a disposal site. Trailing rigs haul it in a hopper holding water and sediment, then dump it somewhere else. If your permit says you can't discharge water back into the river then the hopper dredge is a nightmare because you gotta truck that soggy mess to a landfill. But with the cutter, that slurry line is already contained. So maybe check your permit conditions first before worrying about tree roots. Root clogs are a headache but a permit violation can shut down the whole job.

morganhill2mo ago

You had to truck that stuff to a landfill? That's wild. I never even thought about how much extra work the permit could add just based on the dredge type.

dylanmurray2mo ago

I worked a job up in Massachusetts where the permit straight up said no water discharge within 500 feet of a shellfish bed. We had a hopper dredge on site and it turned into a logistical nightmare. Every time we pulled a load we had to let it sit in a lined pit for 24 hours just to let the water evaporate a little, then we hauled the wet sediment to a special landfill that took contaminated spoils. It added like three extra days per week of trucking. People really do not think about how the permit shapes your entire plan before you even touch the water. Have you ever seen a permit clause that forced you to switch equipment mid-job?