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Show dredge coming to Utah Lake has illustrious history The dredge coming to Utah Lake and American Fork Boat Harbor was originally part of this ship, the Chester Harding. The dredge will be mounted on a barge when it goes to work clearing out bottom of Utah Lake. Tj65 member crew called her jiof the Fleet." (girt was one classy lady in her OVsaid Milt Hanks of Shoreline JAjk'pment, who personally L:d to Portland and inspected "'lip known as the. Chester m JlJ-Harding was built in 1939 by .iir(!and Jones at the cost of $1.7 W" i dollars. She has eight hopper f jid can dredge up to 62 feet in urt'The current replacement cost seagoing vessel would be in lit) of $10 million. Harding, named for General """vr A. Harding, isn't just ft fix pretty ship. Her hull con-rjjjfl con-rjjjfl the dredge pump and ''(l,nery which will be removed, jjembled and transported to f (Dredge Harding was assigned iVPortland District and was the "Rl largest hopper dredge ififfLed by the Corps of Engineers. . of i-ipast is illustrious. She has miffed in New York, England, iany. Venezuela, Hawaii, the ifjoean, Panama, on the Gulf Galveston and Mobile, and , the west coast from ) fkngton to California. iing a project in Hawaii, bits " .pieces of the horror of Pearl "'J.i'jr entered the Harding via the iWving pumps. Silverware, mess CSand hammock rings from the isunk on that Dec. 7 have been S Dogtags, machine gun parts, engraved coffee cups and an polis ring were also discovered M timed over to the Navy for the na Memorial. ii.'ording to the crew, some J ge things have come into the Ling hoppers during dredging - dredge" will be delivered to Utah county by the National Guard and will be used for flood control. According to Shoreline Development, none of this would have been possible without the "tireless efforts of Bill Arseneau," the director of Utah's Division of Surplus Property. Arseneau, who has had the support sup-port of American Fork and the Utah County commissioners also had the assistance of Clyde Naylor, county engineer. Naylor, an advocate of Surplus Property, met personally with Gov. Norman H. Bangerter to gain support in acquiring the dredge. Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, was instrumental in wording the legislation which declared the Harding as surplus, making the dredge available to the state for flood control. Concerns have been voiced by the dredging industry that the arrival of the Harding's hopper dredges could take away as much as $400 million worth of dredging work from its members. In a letter to Robert K. Dawson, assistant secretary of the Army, Garn called the allegations "wild" and "with no substantiation in fact." Because the state has allocated approximately $100 million to pump water from the great Salt Lake, Garn emphasized "that the state cannot and will not use state funds to purchase a dredge or dredging services on its waterways." The county's dredging project has met an obstacle as Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah announced introduction in-troduction of a bill to create a waterfowl refuge around Utah Lake. A federal refuge would prohibit dredging of the lake with the exception ex-ception of the northern shore. It would also bar the recreational and other developments around the lake that county officials have been working on for years. The Utah Lake Study Committee is preparing a resolution concerning the proposed waterfowl refuge. Although acquisition of the dredge has been secured, the arrival time is still uncertain. Salvaging the hopper dredge is the next step. The dredge parts should be in Utah this summer. sum-mer. The hopper dredge can be compared com-pared to a giant vacuum cleaner. The dredge has pipes called dragarms which extend from each side of the hull. Drags at the end of each dragarm are lowered to the bottom and slowly pulled over the area to be dredged. Pumps create suction in the dragarm and the dirt is drawn up through the arms and deposited in hoppers in the mid-section of the dredge. When the hoppers are full, the dredge pumps the load ashore to a place of disposal or the material is dumped through bottom doors in deep water. Survey vessels fitted with electronic elec-tronic equipment make underwater readings to determine when the channel has reached the desired depth. There are plans for dredging at the mouth of the Jordan River, the American Fork River and the Provo River where an underwater basins 50 feet deep will be dug to help control debris. Dirt taken from the lake floor will be emptied on shore and the possibilities for its use includes; enlarging the Provo airport, raising surrounding farmland, diking Goshen Bay and increasing recreation areas on and near the lake. a baby diving bird. The bird had even gone through the pumps but was still alive and okay. In 1976, in the San Francisco harbor, the Harding was rammed by the freighter Don Carlos. The freighter left a 15 by 20 foot hole in the Harding. Luckily the Harding wasn't loaded or most of the crew would have drowned. They couldn't have gotten out of their rooms. In 1981, the Harding was placed on standby and hasn't left her mooring since that time. Shoreline Development has contracted with American Fork and Utah County to obtain a dredge which will be removed from the Harding, disassembled and transported tran-sported to Utah. It will then be mounted on a barge in Utah Lake. The dredge is equipped with 1,000 horsepower diesel engines which enables the machine to move 30 cubic yards of dirt a minute; the equivalent of 125 dump truck loads per hour. After the dredge is removed from the ship, the ship might be dismantled and sold as scrap metal. According to Hanks, there are efforts being made to keep the hull in service and perhaps use the Harding as a fishing vessel. "The people of Utah are grateful to the Corps for making the dredge available and extend a special thank you to the men who served on the Chester Harding. There will be an effort made to salvage many of the parts from the Harding and place them in a museum as a memorial to her crew and officers," said Hanks. Shoreline Development, which has an agreement with American Fork and Utah County to operate the dredge, inspected the ship, made a parts list and took inventory last February. The dredge motor measures 12 feet long, four feet wide and eight feet high. A piston measures 16 inches across. The engine and pump together weigh 30 tons. Shoreline has also been instrumental in-strumental in helping the county obtain a Terex Titan 25 yard dump truck through Surplus Properties. A "land dredge" has also been made available that is capable of digging a trench 20 feet wide, 12 feet deep and 600 feet long a day. The "land |