Army Corps of Engineers says they will return next week
Quincy On the thirteenth of August, Quincy’s dredging crews were pulled off duty.
Corporate Communications Chief Allen Marshall informed Muddy River News that the Dredge operating in Quincy Boat Harbor was summoned away because it was required for emergency dredging operations on the Red River in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The team from the Rock Island District Survey will visit Quincy Harbor the following week to determine the total number of cubic yards excavated.
At pool stage, the water level should be six feet.
The cut, or targeted area, is roughly 2,000 feet long and runs along Quincy Bay’s land side to the bridge that connects people to Quinsippi Island.
Crews were halfway through the planned removal of 55,000 cubic yards of silt and its transfer to two retention ponds, ahead of schedule, as MRN reported on July 26.
According to Marshall’s email to MRN on Friday, the Rock Island District will assess the remaining monies when the harbor survey is finished and decide whether there are any other alternatives for finishing more dredging.
The Fiscal Year Energy and Water Appropriation Bill, signed into law by President Biden on March 9, 2024, provided $8.3 million for dredging in six small boat harbors in the Mississippi Valley Region.Regular funding for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works Program is $8.68 billion, according to that bill.
John Mungo, a longtime owner of Boathouse, stated that he believes boating has decreased in the area this summer, but that the dredging isn’t the reason why.
He claimed that the river was high and that most of the sandbars were submerged under the water. There is nowhere to congregate.
if the water flow has been aided by the dredging that has taken place. It’s too soon to know, Mango said.
Until the water level drops, we won’t truly know.
in 6:00 on Friday morning, the stage in Quincy was 13.93 feet high. When MRN verified with John Brammeir of the website RiverGages.com via the Corps of Engineers at 6:00 Friday morning, the tail stage at Lock and Dam 21 (also close to Quincy) was at 13.15 feet.
Over the weekend, we expect both sites to gradually decline. According to Brammeier, Quincy is expected to reach roughly 13.5 feet by Monday, and the L&D 21 tail stage is expected to reach roughly 12.6 feet by the same day. It is predicted that the outflow from Lake Red Rock Reservoir, the largest lake in Iowa, would remain constant over the weekend.
Beginning on Saturday, the outflow from Coralville Reservoir (a lake between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, Iowa) is predicted to decrease by roughly 1000 cubic feet per second (cfs) every day; however, the impact of those reductions won’t reach Quincy for at least five days, and it will be minimal.
For instance, according to Brammeier, Coralville is likely to experience daily cuts of about 1000 cubic feet per second.
The flow via the open river this Friday morning at L&D 21 was approximately 159,000 cubic feet per second, which is significantly higher than the predicted cuts five days upstream.
Rather, cuts in the Mississippi River upstream of Quincy’s mainstem—the main or greatest portion of a channel—will be primarily responsible for the flow drop. We are currently passing water from last weekend’s rainfall across Southern Wisconsin and Dubuque. In the past few days, it has finally begun to move into Quincy.
