Shipping in the Bay Area can only exist due to one unsung, unglamorous and Sisyphean task: pulling mud from the San Francisco Bay. That dredging process has enormous implications for the future of…
At the Port of Oakland on a recent weekday, trucks, cranes and container-laden ships moved goods across the sprawling 1,300-acre complex with the precarious precision of a Rube Goldberg machine.
“The bottom line is that if we don’t dredge, none of this happens,” said port spokesperson Robert Bernardo, looking out over stacks of containers. “Period.” For the past 20 years, the process of disposing of all that extra mud has been governed by what agencies refer to as the “40-40-20” split. Over the course of five years, 40% of the mud dredged from the bay is dumped into the Pacific Ocean, 40% is designated for “beneficial reuse,” such as restoring wetlands, and 20% is disposed of elsewhere in the bay.“That was an old paradigm.
The same study estimated that over $100 billion of economic assets are at risk of flooding over that same time period. “We are in a scenario where there’s a desire to do more beneficial reuse, but much of the material is still being dumped into the ocean because it’s cheaper,” said Ian Wren, a staff scientist with San Francisco Bay Keeper, a local environmental nonprofit.
The MSC Anna sails toward the Port of Oakland on April 16, 2020. The 1,312 foot-long MSC Anna is the largest ship in North American history to dock at the Port of Oakland. “We’re seeing ships getting longer, wider, ships increasing in size,” said Edwin Draper, a Port Supervising Engineer at the Port of Oakland. “It’s definitely more challenging to maneuver in tight spaces. These turning spaces are almost like a cul-de-sac.
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