Volunteers recently picked up trash along the banks of the Ohio River as part of the annual River Sweep. Now, the river bed is getting a clean-up of its own.
Eighty-five thousand cubic yards of sediment ae being dredged up from the bottom of the river.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is tasked with maintaining a shipping channel through downtown Evansville that’s 300 feet wide and 9 feet deep, according to Jim Scherzinger, the navigation and dredging team leader for USACE Louisville District.
To keep the river navigable, it has to tidy up the river bed every two to three years.
Barge transportation would be difficult with-out that clean-up, says Mike Nguyen who manages Army Corps dredging projects in the Chicago area.
"They would have to light-load their barges to be able to pass through those channels," he says.
That just means putting fewer goods on each barge.
"And so it becomes inefficient for the business to barge in materials through that channel," he says.
The sediment build-up is disposed outside the Ohio River’s shipping channel, close to the Kentucky river bank.
The dredging started Sunday and is expected to continue through the weekend.