Port of Longview commissioners Wednesday approved a 20-year agreement with four other ports to purchase a land easement for a dredge disposal site on Puget Island.
Longview port will contribute about $174,400 toward the purchase, which is the final property the five lower Columbia River ports are required to provide for maintaining the Columbia River channel deepening project. That project is a joint effort by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the “sponsor ports” (Longview, Kalama, Vancouver, Woodland and Portland).
Providing sites for the dredge material is one of the ports’ responsibilities for the project, which deepened the shipping lanes by 3 feet, to a minimum depth of 43 feet. The Vik property, which is owned by Philip and Ivy Vik, is an 86-acre site that will provide storage of about 3.5 million cubic yards of dredged material. That much material would raise the whole site about a foot if spread evenly over all 85 acres.
The Viks, the ports and Corps agreed on a sale price of $695,000, which will be shared among the ports, according to a Sept. 4 memo to port officials.
