re: Planned freshwater diversions will doom LA salt fishing

Don't forget you have to not impede any shipping traffic with deep draft vessels so you are limited to what you can do.

Also a majority of the dredging the corps does in the river is all re-suspending sediment. They use a pan dredge to suck it up off the river bottom and pump it a mile or half mile through a pipe trailing behind the ship to be carried down stream.

Ideal solution would be a bottom sitting unmanned dredge that pumps to diversions in these locations. Think of something like the bottom dredges they use for diamond mining off the coast of Africa in 200-300 ft of water.

Corps actually did a big study on creating a sediment trap at head of passes (I'm fairly certain but don't hang me if I'm off on exact location). A sediment trap is basically a giant hole which slows down the current enough to allow the sediment load to fall out, then you can pump it from a single location. The thing that really killed it when still in feasability stage was they couldn't buy the equipment bc it wasn't made in the USA.

Also, ever ask the corps how much they actually dredge? They may be trying to keep a good count these days, but years ago several months of asking that very question finally got to the answer of "we dunno we don't care." (Put in layman a terms)

Reason why: The dredges are paid a day rate to stay on site to maintain a navigation depth. If they move 1 cy or 1,000,000 cy they get paid the same. If the corps were to release them from the day rate and make it a quantity contract they would go somewhere else as soon as the job was done. Then 3 months later when the river had to be dredged again they would not have a dredge bc they went to Africa/Asia and its more profitable to stay there.

So in order to ensure navigability of the river (their mandate) the dredgers stay on a day rate to stay on location.