West Bay is part of an estuarine system traversed by the GIWW near Panama City, Bay County, Florida. Apalachicola Bay is a large estuary at the mouth of the Apalachicola River in Franklin County, Florida. St. George Island, a large barrier island, forms its southern boundary. The towns of Apalachicola and Eastpoint are on the northern boundary of the bay and are important fishing communities. Shrimp trawlers and clam boats are frequent users of the GIWW in this area, which traverses the bay from the Apalachicola River eastward toward the town of Carrabelle. USACE-Mobile District maintains the GIWW and performs routine maintenance dredging on an as-needed basis to keep the waterway open for commercial traffic.
ANAMAR Environmental Consulting, Inc. was contracted to collect proposed dredged material and site water samples in select areas of the GIWW, subcontract the physical and chemical analytical portion of the work to qualified laboratories, and provide a draft and a final report to USACE-Mobile detailing the work performed.
The scope of work required expedited analysis of the grain-size samples to determine if chemical analysis was required. Samples that were determined to be predominantly sand did not require further chemical analysis. To obtain the physical results and still meet holding times for chemical analysis of samples, the physical samples were shipped to the lab directly from the field. This required logistical planning of the field effort to ensure that samples could be shipped at the end of the day in time to meet the shipper’s schedule for next-day delivery to the laboratory.. To save USACE money on shipping costs, ANAMAR recommended that sediment and water samples be held until it was determined which samples would require chemical analysis. ANAMAR coordinated with the courier and the laboratories to ensure that samples not requiring chemical analysis were delivered to the labs within holding times.