Official Site of The State of New Jersey

One of the largest components of New Jersey's Marine Trades Program is dredging and dredged material management. Sustainable and perpetual use strategies for confined disposal facilities (CDFs), characterization of materials for beneficial use purposes, regional and watershed based planning are important parts of the state's commitment to assisting marinas and marine businesses.

Planning can enable dredging project "bundling" when and where appropriate, i.e. matching of dredged material with beneficial use opportunities and cost-effective placement of dredged material and efficient CDF management.

The DMMS being developed is the cornerstone of all of New Jersey's efforts. New Jersey is the only state in the nation endeavoring to build and utilize such an innovative system, a potential nationwide model for small quantity dredged material management solutions.

With its Office of Information Technology, NJDOT's partners are:

• New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Coastal Engineering
• New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Dredging and Sediment Technology
• United States Army Corps of Engineers
• Richard Stockton University Coastal Research Center, and others.

Eventually, utilizing available information from I BOAT NJ projects and other sources, NJDOT/OMR plans to compile public and private dredging needs in order to be able to easily match quantities of dredged material with opportunities for dredged material.

Planning efforts will also allow NJDOT/OMR to be better able to assist localities and municipalities with their specific planning efforts for dredged material, including regional siting of dredged material management facilities.

The effort is evolutionary and currently focuses on five layers of information.

• Federal, state and private material management areas
• NJDOT capital construction projects with a fill requirement
• New Jersey marinas
• State navigation channels
• Beneficial use opportunities

Overall goals for dredged material management include the ability to:

• matched dredged material generators/existing material with those who need it
• track and document available chemical and geotechnical characteristics of material being managed and/or placed into CDFs
• make logical and cost-efficient decisions for dredged material management
• assist localities with logical and cost-efficient dredged material management decision-making
• develop regional dredged material management facilities
• coordinate information gathered from relevant projects such as those funded by I BOAT NJ
• simplify the dredging permit process