Gator Wraps Up Turkey Creek Dredging Scheme

Gator Dredging, a Florida based dredging contractor, has completed the muck removal from Turkey Creek in Palm Bay, Florida, under budget and ahead of schedule.

Part of the larger Indian River Lagoon cleanup effort in Brevard County, this project involved dredging over 236,000 cubic yard of muck using an Ellicott 670 dredger Jesse Marie.

“Dredging was completed ahead of schedule even with the project area being located in a Manatee Winter Refuge with Gator Dredging providing manatee protection and observance,” the company stated.

The dredged material was pumped to a Dredged Material Management Area (DMMA), owned by the Florida Inland Navigational District (FIND), located approximately 9,000 linear feet to the North of the furthest dredge cut.

Gator Dredging teamed with Gator Aquatic Technologies (GAT) of Mulberry, FL to implement an innovative Phosphorus removal system.

The Mulberry based company used a patent pending technology that supplies a series of aquatically safe chemicals to remove phosphorus and excess nutrients from the dredged water to levels not consistently attained by other technologies.

“The chemicals are dosed directly into the incoming dredge line as the dredge slurry is monitored continuously, and adjustments are made automatically by the injection system. The treated water was then reintroduced to Indian River Lagoon adjacent to the DMMA,” Gator said in its announcement.

For this project, total phosphorus levels were reduced to non-detectable levels <10ppb.

In total – GAT treated 205 million gallons, removing 61,000lbs of total phosphorus and 190,000lbs of total nitrogen.

This water treatment successfully prevented thousands of pounds of Phosphorus from reentering the Indian River Lagoon eco-system, Gator said.

Removal of the phosphorus will reduce the growth of algae that has severely harmed the Indian River Lagoon area, most recently resulting in a large fish-kill.

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