Fugro Atlantic, a branch of Fugro West, is the lead geotechnical engineer for Craney Island Design Partners, a consortium that is designing the eastward expansion of the Craney Island Dredge Material Management Area and the Craney Island Marine Terminal, in Portsmouth, Virginia.  The design consortium is led by Moffatt & Nichol and the work is being carried out for the Virginia Port Authority.

Located at the confluence of the Elizabeth and James Rivers, the Craney Island site received navigation-related dredge material from private and public dredging projects bounded by the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel on the west, to the James River on the north, and the entire Elizabeth and Nanesmond Rivers.  The dredged material facility is owned and operated by the United States Army Corp of Engineers.  The Corp of Engineers determined that the existing facility would reach capacity in 2025 and the Port Authority would run out of capacity in 2011.

The planned expansion will serve to extend the life of the dredged material facility while also providing an area for additional containerized cargo handling facilities.  When complete, the project will comprise some 250 hectares of dredged material landfill and 2,500 meters of wharf.  The Corps of Engineers and the Port Authority began the preliminary engineering and design phase in the spring of 2007.  Construction on the new dikes is scheduled to begin in 2009 and the first phase of the terminals is scheduled to open in 2017.

Fugro commenced subsurface investigations for the Craney Island Project in June 2007 with the deployment of the Roson seabed in-situ testing system.  Explorations conducted with the system included 120 CPT soundings, 20 T-bar soundings, and 12 in-situ vane shear tests.  Marine geotechnical site investigations including 20 overwater borings, with extensive soil sampling, in-situ testing, and borehole logging at the expansion area were performed from Fugro's Skate 2 jack-up drilling platform.

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With the data collected, Fugro is developing geotechnical design criteria for rock-retaining structures as well as the landfill reclamation and ground improvements aspects of the project.  In addition, Fugro is synthesizing various geologic and exploration data into a regional GIS database of the lower James River and Chesapeake Bay region.

"The Craney Island project has given us the opportunity to establish Fugro Atlantic as the pre-eminent geotechnical firm for large, complex coastal infrastructure projects in along the U.S. East Coast.   We plan to be here for the ribbon cutting at the container wharf in 2017,"  proclaims Tom McNeilan, Vice President of Fugro West and Principal of the Fugro Atlantic operation.

For more information on the Craney Island Project, please visit the Craney Island Eastward Expansion Project website, http://www.craneyisland.info.

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