Planning dredging services in contaminated sediments for balanced environmental and investment costs

Dredging of contaminated sediments has shown to be a harmful activity for the environment, because a number of contaminants can be resuspended and become available to the organisms. Furthermore, dredged contaminated sediments may cause significant damages in the dumping site. In order to avoid the drawbacks of this activity, better techniques have to be developed and the present article presents a new procedure for the planning of dredging that reduces the environmental impacts by reducing the amount of dredged sediments and, at the same time, reduces costs. The new technique uses screening of contaminant concentrations in the sediments that are normally part of the environmental impact assessment for dredging activity. A detailed mapping of the contamination, layer by layer is carried out and the areas where the action levels are reached are outlined with polygons, establishing limits within which sediments have to be dredged with safe procedures. In the case presented, construction of a harbor in Sepetiba Bay, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the safe procedure is cutter/suction dredging and pumping into a sub-aquatic confined disposal facility (CDF). A detailed evaluation of costs showed that if the whole layers of sediment were to be dumped into the CDF, the cost of the activity would be at least 63.82% more expensive than the proposed procedure, constituting an attractive advantage. Furthermore, as the size of the CDF is significantly smaller, less dredging is necessary, causing smaller environmental impact.

► A screening of contaminants was carried out to evaluate sediment contamination. ► The contamination contours permitted a better choice of dredging procedures. ► A minute dredging plan was shown to reduce environmental impacts. ► The economic costs of dredging were reduced and environmental harm was controlled.