Over the next decade, the Army Corps of Engineers will dredge more than 65 million cubic yards of silt and sand from the estuary to make room for a new generation of supercargo tankers that ride deeper in the water.
The maintenance budget was cut particularly savagely, says Iain Sturdy of the Somerset drainage board.Both the National Union of Farmers and local MPs insist that Somerset's waterways ought to have been dredged more regularly: parts of one river there are down to as little as two-thirds of its capacity in the 1960s.
I have nightmarish visions of Android Al desperately trying to show he's soulful by sniffling at the podium, dredging up more Gore tragedy.
While in almost all circumstances, dredging causes more problems than it solves, and though, as even Owen Paterson admits, "increased dredging of rivers on the Somerset Levels would not have prevented the recent widespread flooding", there's an argument here for a small amount of dredging at strategic points.
Freshwater dredging totaled more 37.9 million cubic yards (29 million cubic metres) of earth taken from the lake, 11.4 million cubic yards (8.7 million cubic metres) as part of the Pacific access channel, and 23.5 million cubic yards (18 million cubic metres) from the Atlantic entrance.
It would mean "more dredging in the Great Barrier Reef, more ships through its waters and more carbon emissions", she said.
They could have homed in on more specific themes – "The weak are meat, and the strong do eat" is one resonant catchphrase – that might have dredged up more protein from the zeitgeist.
Langella impressively dredges up more desperation, but his compelling decline is essentially from authority rather than from sanity.
After the Navy dredged out more of the muck, tugs towed the ship away for the first time in 25 years.
In an evening of drink and drugs, Tim gets his guests to join him in digging up the hillock where he made his discovery, and they dredge up more evidence of foul play.
