Georgia

The Savannah River Harbor requires periodic dredging to support commercial shipping traffic. These materials are disposed within a series of diked, dredged material containment areas (DMCAs) located on the eastern side of the Savannah River in Jasper County, South Carolina. Under mutual agreement, the US Army Corps of Engineers dredges the materials from the Port and disposes the materials in specific DCMAs identified by the Chatham County (Georgia) Engineers Office. Under this agreement, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) is responsible for the design and maintenance of the DCMAs which occupy 5,635 acres of land and are bounded by nearly 44 miles of front, back, and divider dikes. Part of this responsibility is to design and stage the requisite dike raisings to provide sufficient dredged materials storage capacity along an 18-mile long reach of the river. At the time of the project, the previous two dike raisings initiated a series of relatively small and localized slope stability failures. Relatively expensive short-term stability measures had to be developed by GDOT to provide the requisite storage capacity. GDOT's primary objective for the project was development of a strategy for optimizing dike construction and DMCA management so that cost-effective long-term dredge material containment could be provided.