A dredging project off the coast of England will support a restoration initiative to mitigate the effects of the changing climate.
The £25 million (about $32 million USD) Environment Agency-funded undertaking at the Port of Felixstowe will redistribute 85,000 cubic meters (two cubic miles) of sediment to form 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) of coastal flood defenses, 406 hectares (1,003 acres) of coastal floodplain grazing marsh, and 240 hectares (593 acres) of coastal saltmarsh, FreightWeek reported.
The two-year venture will begin later in 2025 and buffer West Mersea, Tollesbury, and Salcott, the BBC reported. The sediment will not be dumped at sea as usual but instead used to fortify places along the Blackwater Estuary, including Old Hall Point, Cobmarsh Island, and Tollesbury Wick.
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Definitely 👍 The Essex Wildlife Trust, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Harwich Haven Authority are all stakeholders.
This is not the only step forward for the port. In 2023, there was another environmentally conscious dredging project at Felixstowe, and in 2024, it received a portion of the 17 electric cranes it ordered from Konecranes to lessen its carbon pollution.
These projects are necessary because of human-driven rising global temperatures. Caused by the burning of dirty energy sources such as coal and gas, this rapid warming of Earth is changing the climate. In addition to hotter temperatures, places all over the globe are experiencing increasingly frequent and intense severe weather as well as weather whiplash, a fluctuation from, for example, extremely wet to extremely dry conditions.
The heating of the planet is also melting ice and expanding water, which leads to rising sea levels and coastal erosion. In the United Kingdom, which has taken a lead in prioritizing decarbonization and preparing for the future, this could have a massive impact.
In the East of England, which includes the port, the major threat is coastal erosion, with as many as 25% of properties at risk through 2055 and 35% through 2105, according to a national assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk. Surface water flooding is also a danger.
Officials hope that ringed plovers and little terns, among other species, will benefit from new wildlife habitats.
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