Dredging Rivers: A Solution to Future Flooding?

Flooding impacts people, wildlife and the environment. It can disrupt everyday activities and damage land and agriculture, causing millions of dollars of damage. Preventing floods or mitigating the damage floods can cause is a significant concern for many people. 

While not specifically a flood prevention measure, dredging can stop floods or mitigate their damage in several ways. By increasing water flow around flood-prone bodies of water, it can help realign bodies of water, allowing teams to control the flow of potential flood water to direct it away from essential areas. Some case studies show how dredging teams can rely on these operations to make a significant positive impact on communities and the environment.

1. How Can Dredging Impact Flooding?
2. How Dredging Aids Flood Prevention Efforts
3. How Eco Friendly Dredging Works
4. Aid in the Battle Against Flooding with Dredging

How Can Dredging Impact Flooding?

Dredging operations have several uses outside of flood management, including opening waterways, increasing resource access, preparing construction sites and environmental remediation. Many of the same processes can also mitigate potential flood damage and direct water away from crucial areas. 

Pairing proper dredging strategies with other flood risk management tactics can protect people and wildlife from the devastating effects of floods. 

Explore how dredging can mitigate flood damage or prevent flooding:

• Increasing capacity: According to the Environmental Protection Agency, billions of pounds of sediment are dredged annually. Dredging can increase capacity by deepening bodies of water or expanding their width. The increased capacity can better accommodate heavy rainfall or significant snowmelt, helping to prevent significant flooding. 

• Removing debris: Removing debris can clear blockages and improve natural water flow. Clearing obstacles can prevent flooding by preventing large volumes of water from accumulating in one location and causing overflows in shallow areas.

• Improving drainage: Another significant aspect of dredging is stormwater management. This strategy helps improve drainage systems by clearing drains and ensuring proper function, reducing water buildup that can lead to flooding. 

• Facilitating navigation: Dredging teams can facilitate water flow to direct water from important areas. Whether teams create new channels or implement other practices to clear waterways, this strategy can prevent drastic devastation during floods. 

How Dredging Aids Flood Prevention Efforts

Dredging can prevent flooding through various methods across a few environments. Here’s a closer look at where teams can use the practice to protect local communities and wildlife.

River Dredging 

River management is one of the most prevalent forms of dredging for flood prevention. Roughly 80% of the global population lives in countries facing river flood risks, but regular dredging can minimize these dangers.

As these bodies of water flow, upstream erosion can carry excess sediment and pollutants downstream, making these spots more likely to overflow. Consequently, waters are less likely to flow over the bank once teams remove loose material from the riverbed. Flood-prone nations like Taiwan have capitalized on that opportunity, regularly managing stream sediment to prevent the worst effects of erosion.

Coastal Dredging 

Similar methods can address flood risks near coastlines. In 2021, the state of New York completed 20 dredging projects along the shores of Lake Ontario to remove sediment buildup, preventing excessively high water levels.

Other coastal areas use dredging to stop erosion rather than clean up its effects. This approach — called nourishment — adds material to eroding coastlines rather than removing it. The new sediment is typically less fine and more stable than what would otherwise contact the water, making it less likely to enter waterways and increase flood risks as a result.

Dam Reservoir Dredging 

Finally, dredging operations can tackle flood hazards along reservoirs. Dams also play a role in flood prevention. Debris dams are designed to catch debris in rivers. It holds the debris on the upper side, allowing water to flow free of large materials like tree limbs and gravel. 

Dredging these human-made dam reservoirs has the same effect as removing sediment from natural rivers or lakes. Less loose material in the waterway means lower water levels and a reduced risk of flowing over into the land.

How Eco-Friendly Dredging Works

Like many other industries, the dredging industry constantly faces new innovations and changing technologies that impact operations. Dredging teams must remain current on dredging regulations and best practices to ensure efficiency, safety and environmental friendliness. These concerns are all the more prevalent in anti-flooding dredging operations.

While dredging can reduce flood risks, it may also disrupt local aquatic wildlife, raising the need for eco-friendly alternatives to conventional approaches. Crafting strategies, implementing a combination of modern methods, and leveraging reliable machinery and cutting-edge technologies can equip teams to handle these tasks.

Generally speaking, suction dredging is better for the environment than other methods. Its primary benefit is removing excess material without accidentally redistributing as much sediment back into the environment. As a result, it’s less disruptive to fish and other species living in the area.

Research has also found providing new habitats can mitigate the negative effects of disrupting a river’s natural flow. For example, using boulders and digging channels to create new streams and pools for fish to migrate to lets wildlife move out of harm’s way until the ecosystem resettles after the project. This method is more impactful in freshwater than ocean environments, but the results from early experiments are promising.

New technologies like modeling software may also help. Artificial intelligence can analyze an area and compare it to past data to predict how various dredging operations may impact local ecosystems. Companies can then simulate various mitigation strategies in this software to find which approach will have the lowest environmental impact.

Aid in the Battle Against Flooding With Dredging

Flooding is a significant natural disaster that can impact families, animals, and surrounding environments. With weather and climate disasters becoming more common, innovative prevention methods are necessary. While the forces of nature can be unpredictable, crafting comprehensive mitigation strategies can help minimize the possible impacts and deliver peace of mind to everyone nearby.

Dredging is not a complete solution to flooding — it does not address the root cause of these disasters — but it is a helpful relief measure. As broader changes tackle the driving factors of climate change, dredging can offset the worst effects, ensuring what the world can’t stop is at least less destructive.