Walsh Wins $39 Million Fairport Harbor Maintenance Dredging Contract

Walsh Services Solutions LLC of Kalamazoo, Michigan, has received a $39.3 million firm-fixed-price contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Buffalo District for maintenance dredging at Fairport Harbor, Ohio. Walsh will remove sediment from the harbor’s federal navigation channel on Lake Erie and place dredged material in designated upland and nearshore areas. The Fairport Maintenance Dredging solicitation calls for three years of work, with completion estimated for Sept. 14, 2029.

Fairport Maintenance Dredging Details

Walsh will mobilize dredging equipment for each of the three planned work periods and dredge portions of Fairport Harbor and the Grand River federal channel. The solicitation’s bid schedule estimates 70,000 cubic yards of material annually for nearshore placement and 186,000 cubic yards annually for placement at a government-designated upland site—a combined 256,000 cubic yards of scheduled base work per year.

The schedule assigns nearshore placement to material dredged from the outer-channel area extending toward Lake Erie’s 26-foot contour. Material from other designated channel reaches is slated for the upland site. Walsh must carry out the placement work under an environmental protection plan addressing construction impacts and applicable environmental requirements.

The work maintains access to a commercial harbor where channel depth matters to vessel loading. In an October 2025 Fairport Harbor fact sheet, the Corps estimated that the harbor needs about 180,000 cubic yards of dredging every two years and reported removing 106,000 cubic yards in 2024. Those figures describe earlier harbor conditions; the new solicitation sets out a larger, three-year schedule of estimated dredging quantities.

Award and Contractor Background

Four bids were received for the contract. Walsh also held a $8 million contract for Grand River and Fairport Harbor dredging with a potential performance end date of Sept. 14, 2025. That earlier Fairport-area work provides local contract history for the company; the newly awarded contract covers a three-year maintenance-dredging effort.

This award was disclosed by the DoW in its daily press release. Additional contract details will be available on HigherGov in approximately 90 days under W912P426CA016 after the contract is formally disclosed by the government.