Laura Hicks watches some of the final dredging Longview's Lewis and Clark Bridge. Click on the image to read the article in the Daily News.
Laura Hicks, a Portland-based project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, next month will mark completion of a milestone: the $200 million deepening of the Columbia River ship channel from the river’s mouth all the way to Portland, a 103-mile-long, 600-foot wide channel.
Ports along the Lower Columbia, including Longview, Kalama, Woodland, Vancouver, St. Helens and Portland, had been urging the Corps to deepen the river for years so ships could haul more cargo.
As the channel-deepening project winds down, Hicks is moving forward on her next big task: The Corps is seeking to install 1.1 million tons of rock to reinforce the Columbia River jetties against the crashing ocean waves, another project that could take a decade or longer to complete.