Excavator attachment drains swamp - GIF

[Frank S]

I've seen this similar hydraulic driven agitator used for dredging the Mississippi River by Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Just a much longer arm on a floating barge with motive power, with a big centrifical pump that can handle the sand/6" rocks, as they pipe it in a floating bridge pipe to land where it becomes a huge sand pile, after going through a screening operation to separate rocks/gravel from the sand. That was in 1976. I assume the difference is this has the pump located right above the suction inlet screen. I bet this thing has problems if it's not pumping a clay slurry.

Years ago when I was constructing marinas on local lakes A country club where we were building the marina at didn't have sufficient depth for the yachts where the marina needed to be located. They hired a dredging company with a cutterhead dredge That thing was little more than an excavator with a very long boom mounted on a work barge and a huge pump. the cutter head was about 3 ft wide with cutter disks of about 3 feet in diameter. Think of a large stump grinder with a vacuum hood and hose. The silt and rock were pumped to a containment area of about 10 acres. Yhey dredged nearly non stop 24/7 for several months.

[astroscuba]

And then they turned around and started dredging the silt that has been accumulating!