The Costa Rican Institute of Ports of the Pacific reached an agreement with the Puerto Caldera concessionaire, Sociedad Portuaria de Caldera, to advance dredging work next month, due to the high volume of sediment that prevents docking of large draft vessels.
With an investment of ¢ 1.500 millions, the commercial operation will be optimized and the waiting times of the vessels will be reduced. The Executive President of INCOP, Juan Ramón Rivera, explained that high sedimentation in the port has caused the loss of length and depth when ships dock at the dock.
In accordance with the contractual obligation, these works must be carried out every 4 years, the last ones having been carried out in February 2017.
Dredging start is scheduled for the next 2 weeks, consists of extracting the material accumulated in the seabed by means of a suction dredger, which extracts and stores the material in its internal hopper while sailing, in order to restore the original depths for boats to dock in Puerto Caldera.
On this occasion, Van Oord was hired, one of the world’s leading companies in this type of operations, which will allocate a large dredger with a capacity of 10,500 m3.
It is estimated that the volume to be extracted is about 400 thousand cubic meters, which have accumulated since the last dredging campaign that was carried out in February 2017.
As indicated by the Executive President of INCOP, the Pacific Ports Master Plan will be presented shortly, which will include, within its different tasks, works that will allow sediment to accumulate outside the port, so that cleaning operations would be made out of it without affecting the port operation.