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Watch out for submerged logs near the Illinois River mouth | Dredge Operators - Thought Shares

Watch out for submerged logs near the Illinois River mouth

I was running a cutterhead dredge near the Illinois River mouth last Tuesday and hit something big. Turned out to be a buried oak log about 3 feet thick that wasn't showing on the survey. It wrapped around my cutter teeth and bent the ladder frame before I could shut down. Anyone else seeing old timber getting stirred up in the lower Mississippi tributaries after heavy rain?

3 comments

3 Comments

william_garcia3mo ago

That's definitely bad luck with the damage but old buried logs have been getting stirred up in these rivers for centuries. Surveys can't catch everything under the mud especially after heavy rain shifts the bottom around. Sounds more like standard river dredging risk than anything unusual happening down there.

michaeltorres3mo ago

Wait, hold up. Are you saying old buried logs have been getting stirred up for centuries? @william_garcia, that doesn't line up with what I've heard about the riverbed surveys they did last year. They posted a report showing solid ground for like 200 feet down on that stretch. I get that heavy rain can mess with things, but this sounds like someone hit something that shouldn't have been there. If it was just normal dredging risk, the damage would probably look different than what people are describing. Seems more like a survey missed a big problem rather than just bad luck with some old wood.

nancyn693mo ago

See it the other way myself. Those surveys only go so deep and they miss a lot, especially after a big storm shifts everything around. You're right that the damage looks different, but that could just be from hitting something bigger or more solid than the usual deadwood. Stuff gets buried and moved around in ways these reports can't account for, period. A clean survey result doesn't mean the whole river bottom is perfectly mapped out every time.