AECOM is the Lead Designer for the new 2-mile long Nice-Middleton Bridge across the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia for the design-builder, Skanska-Corman-McLean (SCM). Our environmental team in concert with the owner, MDTA, obtained all final authorizations to start construction within six months of Notice to Proceed, well ahead of the project’s aggressive schedule.
Along with trestle construction and test pile driving, this authorized the start of critical path dredging for barge access, completed in October. The 18,000 cubic yards of Potomac River sediment was delivered to the Weanack Reclamation and Beneficial Use Site on the James River in Virginia. Weanack was created by the landowner, Charles Carter, and AECOM and first utilized 20 years ago to accept the dredged material from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project, the world’s largest drawbridge which also spans the Potomac River. Since 2000, Weanack has served as one of the only sites to accept dredged material from large-scale projects in the mid-Atlantic and is a model for beneficial use.
With AECOM’s innovative support, Weanack has served as a sustainable facility which is using otherwise undesirable river mud to thus far reclaim and transform over 100 acres of mined-land into a mix of highly productive agricultural fields and wildlife habitat.
“It is very gratifying to walk across a productive field of cotton atop dredged material that we placed two decades ago while continuing to restore additional areas on Weanack as part of our new infrastructure projects, said Mike Baker, AECOM Environmental Manager on a visit to Weanack while offloading the final barge from the Nice-Middleton Bridge Project.
“From inception through today, the long-term partnership between Mike and the AECOM Team has been crucial to Weanack as we continue to offer solutions to the dredging and infrastructure needs of the region,” said Charles Carter, Owner/Manager of Weanack Land LLC. “
