Working on the Columbia River last spring, I saw a cutterhead clog on a sandbar that shouldn't have been there. | Dredge Operators

Pat Garcia · 2026-03-31T18:00:10.243998+00:00

The survey data was a week old, and the river bottom had shifted more than we expected. We lost half a day clearing that jam and re-running the line. How often do you guys trust your pre-dredge surveys in fast-moving water?

joel2804mo ago

Read somewhere that side-scan can miss fresh debris by up to 40% in turbid water.

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riley586mo ago

Remember watching a barge crew on the Willamette get totally blindsided by a submerged log pile. Their side-scan missed it completely because the thing had only rolled into the channel after a big rainstorm. They bent a propeller blade pretty bad.

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grant.kevin6mo ago

That Columbia sandbar, was it mostly silt or something coarser?

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