State officials approved Wednesday a $116 million project to expand the Cox Creek containment facility for contaminated material dredged from the port of Baltimore's shipping channel.
The channel's 50-foot depth, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains by dredging, is considered critical to the port's continued growth as larger cargo ships start moving through the Suez and Panama canals.
The new contract, awarded by the state Board of Public Works to the Maryland Environmental Service under an interagency agreement with the Maryland Port Administration, will expand the MPA-owned Cox Creek site's 133-acre dredged material containment facility onto adjacent MPA land and raise its 36-foot dikes.
The expansion will extend the facility's lifetime as port officials continue negotiating for a new containment site on Coke Point, part of the Sparrows Point steel mill property, said James White, the MPA's executive director.
"It gives us some comfort," White said of the Cox Creek expansion, providing the port with more time for negotiations.
The Cox Creek site is about nine miles southeast of Baltimore, on the western bank of the Patapsco River south of the Key Bridge. The MPA maintains a second containment facility at Masonville, in Baltimore.
The two sites combined can accept about 1 million cubic yards of dredged material per year, but the state needs to dispose of 1.5 million cubic yards in the long term, the MPA said. And that is just for routine maintenance of the federal shipping channel within the harbor area, White said.
By state law, material from the harbor, above the Key Bridge, must be placed within containment facilities.
The state dredges millions more cubic yards per year from its channel south of the Key Bridge, which goes to Poplar Island, while other portions go to disposal sites along the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, White said.
The Cox Creek expansion project should allow increased volumes to be received at that facility by the middle of 2018, officials said.
White said he hopes to acquire the Coke Point area as soon as possible for another facility, which would be converted into a new container terminal after it's filled. Negotiations are continuing with Sparrows Point Terminal LLC, which owns the site, he said.
The MPA selected the Cox Creek facility for expansion in consultation with the Harbor Team, an advisory committee made up of representatives from the community, environmental groups, businesses and local governments.
Residents expressed a mix of reactions to the expansion proposal at a public hearing last month. Some expressed concern about its environmental impact and the future usability of the land, while others suggested that the project would benefit the local economy.
The Board of Public Works — which consists of Gov. Larry Hogan, Comptroller Peter Franchot and Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp — approved the contract without much discussion.
Franchot suggested that the Maryland Environmental Service bring subcontracts before the board, though it is not required to do so, but did not question the independent state agency's performance.
The Cox Creek site was constructed by the Corps of Engineers in the 1960s and operated mostly as a private industrial site through the mid-1980s, when it fell into disuse, according to the Maryland Environmental Service.
The site was purchased in parts in 1993 and 1997 by the MPA, which did renovations, including strengthening and raising its dike walls, the environmental service said. Large amounts of dredged material began to arrive in 2012.
Baltimore Sun reporters Michael Dresser and Brandi Bottalico contributed to this article.
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