Ports

How much room do we have between our keel and the bottom of the channel at this tide level?"

This is a question that is often times difficult to answer. The SRCW is planning on working with northwest ports to help better answer questions such as these. By using GPS positioning and improving the vertical reference points around ports, the question of where a ship might run aground will turn into less of a guessing game. In addition, “over-dredging” to counteract these uncertainties may become a thing of the past, thus saving millions of dollars in maintenance and operations costs. The better we know where the piers and channel bottoms are in relation to water levels and surrounding land, the more precise, and more importantly, more efficient port navigation can become.

SRCW’s joint vertical improvement project with Pierce County will be the first step in making this type of precise positioning available for the Port of Tacoma.