Emptying barge
A barge load of sediment is loaded onto semi-dump trucks with a 3 cubic yard excavator bucket at Arrow Terminal in Chicago. An end-loader was placed in the barge to assist in removing the last of the dredged material. The water is primarily from a recent rain. The sediment was excavated from Lower Peoria Lake on Sept. 26, and unloaded on Oct. 7, 2003.

Barge unloading with Toyo pump in Jacksonville, FL
Fine grained sediment is loaded into a barge from the harbor at Jacksonville, FL for a short trip to a confined disposal facility. Due to the short haul distance, adding water is not an issue and several inches accumulate over the mud. The barge is moved to the CDF site and water is added to thin the material so it will flow across the site rather than accumulate near the pipe. Barges can be unloaded in less than an hour. The consistency of material can be altered by adding water to allow the material to be pumped farther or spread over an area. Note that the discharged material is thicker than that at Tampa and splatters like oil.

Barge unloading with Dragflow pump in Tampa, FL
Fine grained sediment is loaded into a barge from the harbor at Tampa, FL for a short trip to a confined disposal facility. Due to the short haul distance, adding water is not an issue and several inches accumulate over the mud. The barge is moved to the CDF site and more water is added to thin the material so it will flow across the site rather than accumulate near the pipe. Barges can be unloaded in less than an hour. The consistency of material can be altered by adding water to allow the material to be pumped farther or spread over an area. Note this discharge is thinner than that at Jacksonville.

Early Truckload
Sediment was taken to the Paxton 1 landfill near Lake Calumet in Chicago. The material was dumped from the trucks and left standing with no further handling. The material dumped from the trucks without problems. It formed pie shaped piles about 2.5 feet high in the center. The sediment in the first truckloads was quite thick.

Later truckload
Later truckloads of sediment contained rainwater that was mixed in while unloading the barge. This made the sediment slightly less cohesive than the earlier loads, but it still formed piles.

End-loader
Sediment dumped from trucks forms uneven piles. An end-loader bucket was used to demonstrate that the sediment is sufficiently cohesive immediately after dumping to be smoothed by a blade. This would provide a relatively even surface after drying that would facilitate planting and cultivating.

Boot
After several months of drying and weathering, the top several inches of sediment becomes more like typical topsoil. It forms a structure known to soil scientists as granular. This is largely due to drying and freezing and thawing over the winter and to the action of microorganisms. It shows that the sediment is making the transformation from wet mud to fertile topsoil.

Hand
As sediment dries it goes from a viscous fluid, mud, to a solid, soil. This video shows two handfuls of sediment. The sediment on the right in the initial sequence was about a foot below the surface all winter. It lost considerable moisture, but did not freeze and was not penetrated by oxygen. Its consistency is similar to modeling clay. The material on the left has dried more thoroughly, oxidized, and weathered near the surface for six months. It is granular and well on its way to forming typical soil structure. Soil microorganisms and plant roots will further this process.

Pumped sediment discharge
Sediment excavated the day before from an Illinois River backwater was pumped by a concrete handling truck with an extended boom. No water was added. The pump easily handled the material that formed piles about two feet high. The boom provides great flexibility in placement options. The pump was operating at about 10% capacity because the available equipment could not feed it faster.

Skidder to conveyor
A wheeled skidder loaded sediment into the hopper of a truck mounted concrete conveyor. Because the hopper is designed for concrete, the more viscous sediment did not readily flow through the hopper onto the belt. The 40-foot feeder belt pulled the sediment from the hopper and carried it to a transfer point on top of the truck where it fell onto the main 105-foot belt. The belt moves horizontally and vertically providing great flexibility in placement options. Sediment could only be fed into the concrete hopper rapidly enough to operate the conveyor at about 10% of its capacity.

Pump to conveyor hopper
In this sequence the concrete pump truck placed sediment into the conveyor hopper. The best results were obtained when the pipe was aligned with the center of the belt. The conveyors had no difficulty handling the sediment. The transfer point and belt scrapers worked well.

The Dry Dredge
The Dry Dredge (TM) uses a small clamshell bucket and concrete pump to move high solids sediment through a pipe. It is shown here operating on Upper Peoria Lake in Illinois. The dredge operated in two feet of water. On this demonstration project it filled geotextile tubes and built a small island.

Dry Dredge in Shallow Water
The Dry Dredge placing sediment in Upper Peoria Lake. The dredge uses a positive displacement pump to move material excavated with an on board clam shell bucket. Among other things, a PD pump could be used to build or elevate islands, create marshes, fill trucks or place material on land.