Baltimore Harbour Limited Reopening By End of April, Say Army Engineers

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) have put out a “tentative timeline” for getting commercial shipping in and out of Baltimore by the end of the month, but a full reopening will likely take twice as long.

A “limited access channel” into the Port of Baltimore will be opened by the end of this month, allowing one-way traffic in and out of the important harbour. The assessment comes in a statement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), with Lieutenant General Scott A. Spellmon saying “exhaustive” surveys and analysis of the remains of the Baltimore bridge means the Corps has “developed a better understanding of the immense and complex work that lies ahead”.

Calling the route to reopening the harbour a “tentative timeline for the restoration of safe navigation in and out of the Port of Baltimore”, the planned “limited access channel” intended to open at the end of April will be 280 feet wide and 35 feet deep.

This development means larger ships than the present emergency access channel that opened at the weekend could enter and leave the harbour will be limited in both quantity and size, but it does mean a limited reopening of the port and relief to the Baltimore economy. At 280 feet wide traffic will necessarily be one-way, given even medium-size container ships like the MV DALI that brought down the Baltimore bridge last week have a beam (width) of 160 feet.

As expressed by USACE: “engineers have determined a tentative timeline for the restoration for safe navigation in and out of the Port of Baltimore… This channel would support one-way traffic in and out of the Port of Baltimore for barge container service and some roll on/roll off vessels that move automobiles and farm equipment to and from the port.”

In other words, the large ships that in normal times serve the port still won’t be able to get in and out.

Per the Army Engineers, this will have to wait until the federal channel reopens, which they estimate will occur by the end of May. Yet the work ahead to realise this goal of completely clearing the channel — never mind floating off and removing the MV Dali which is precariously pinned by the remains of the bridge just west of the dredged federal navigation channel — is enormous.

Cutting the steel of the bridge above water level is comparatively straightforward, but of course much of it is below and embedded in mud and the suddenly shifting weight of a large twisted structure in low-visibility river water could be potentially lethal to divers.