Rep. Waxman Asks for Regular Dredging of Marina Del Rey

Rep. Henry Waxman on Thursday urged the Army Corps of Engineers to begin regularly dredging the waters of Marina Del Rey.

In a letter to the Army Corps, Waxman asked that the marina be dredged every three to five years and pointed out that prior to 2012, the waters had not been dredged for 11 years.

"Although the marina should be dredged every three to five years, it has experienced waits two and three times longer than that," Waxman wrote. "Boats frequently ran aground; and if there had been a major incident along the coast, the clogged waterways could have created havoc for our first responders."

Prior to the most recent dredging project last year, Waxman said more than 800,000 cubic yards of sediment accumulated in the marina and congested up to 55 percent of some marina channels.

"I understand that the Army Corps of Engineers provides funding and a dredging schedule for marinas that require annual dredging, but it does not do so for marinas like Marina del Rey that require dredging on a regular but less frequent basis," Waxman said in his letter. "This policy is damaging to public safety and the economy in Southern California."

Marina Del Rey is one of the largest man-made marinas in the United States and harbors more than 5,000 boats, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

In 2012, a 2,000-ton dredging machine completed the five-month process of dredging hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of sediment from the marina. That sediment was deposited in different areas along the coast including the Port of Long Beach, Dockweiler State Beach and Redondo Beach at a cost of more than $10 million.