Port Clearance Operations in Constrained Environments

From the Field

By Capt. Ander Thompson, P.E., PMP, M.SAME, USA, and 1st Lt. Sarah Guzzo, M.SAME, USA

The U.S. Army’s 7th Engineer Dive Detachment continues to push forward what is possible when performing port damage repairs, recently having undertaken an operation to clear a vital port in Basco, Philippines, which endured the constraints of an austere environment under environmental protections that barred the use of demolitions.

Located about 140-mi north of Luzon, Philippines, the lesser-known island chain of the Batanes Province has an outsize share of military significance, both historical and current. In the 1940s it was the first American territory occupied by the Japanese during World War II. Today, the culturally rich capital, Basco, serves as the logistical hub and conduit for the region’s tourism, fishing, and agriculture industries. It also serves as a location for U.S. forces to carry out joint exercises and information exchange with Philippine counterparts.

From April to June 2024, the U.S. Army’s 7th Engineer Dive Detachment, 84th Engineer Battalion, based out of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, received orders to conduct port clearance operations at Basco in support of the joint exercises Balikatan and Salaknib.

At the request of the Batanes governor, the detachment worked with divers from the Armed Forces Philippines’ 525th Combat Engineer Battalion at the Basco Port. The mission was to reduce obstacles and improve navigable waterways in a port that connects remote islands to the remainder of the Philippines and is vital to disaster response vessels.

Over the course of several weeks, through bilateral diving operations, a variety of obstruction removal methods tested the limits of personnel and equipment to refine military port construction in austere environments.

A Precarious Port, a Protected Area

Nestled between hilly farmland and the provincial capital in the western portion of Batan island, Basco Port is the area’s only facility capable of off-loading major cargo vessels and sustaining the 30,000 residents across the neighboring islands. Built in the 1990s, the port’s infrastructure includes a 225-m dual-sided pier, two roll-on/roll-off ramps, and a smaller municipal harbor for fishing boats. A growing population and the need to increase logistical readiness for natural disasters led to a request for U.S. Army Pacific to identify a means of improving the port’s logistical throughput.
Specializing in port opening and underwater construction, 7th Dive deployed to the Philippines to support the call.

Environmental Requirement. Basco rests in one of 248 environmentally protected areas within the Philippines. During the planning process for the project, the Basco Department of Environment and Natural Resources notified the Army Pacific of the requirement to acquire construction approval from the Protected Area Management Review Board (PAMB).

PAMB is a community-based decision board comprising government and local officials that grants approval to construction projects. Following PAMB approval, to ensure projects abide by regulatory law, the provincial office must grant an environmental compliance certificate (ECC). Army engineer planners attended multiple PAMB meetings over five months to secure approval to begin operations in April 2024.

Public Attention. The detachment encountered one of the project’s most significant friction points while applying for environmental approval. Prior to the start of work, Filipino media discovered that a resort in the Bikol Chocolate Hills had been illegally constructed in a culturally sensitive area without an ECC. This discovery raised public concern for an increase in the regulation of construction in protected regions. In March 2024, the authority for ECC approval in protected areas shifted from the regional office up to the Undersecretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources at the organization’s central office. The Batanes provincial office was no longer able to validate the ECC for the port, and with less than two weeks until project initiation, the U.S. soldiers had to navigate the new process of securing approval from the national office.

With support from the Filipino Armed Forces, local governor and mayor’s offices, and the U.S. Embassy of the Philippines, 7th Dive did eventually receive final approval to use non-explosive methods in May, but resulting in a 25-day project delay.

Testing Methodologies

From port opening to underwater construction and engineer mobility operations, the 150 engineer divers from 7th Dive possess a variety of technical capabilities. Basco Port proved to be a complex operation that required experimentation of the detachment’s full repertoire of skills, including the use of underwater hydraulic tools, demolition, salvage, hydrographic surveying, and multiple modes of diving.

The Army divers had first gained an understanding of the problem in October 2023, when they conducted a multi-beam hydrographic survey to collect underwater imagery of the port. This survey identified ubiquitous coral beds and more than 50 boulders ranging from 5-m beneath the surface to protruding above the tides. The detachment executed a level one pier inspection and assessed the waterfront facilities to be in critical condition. The confluence of obstructions and degradation of infrastructure highlighted an immediate need to address issues to sustain the port’s vital operational use.

The Army detachment initially determined that calculated underwater explosives would be the most effective means to break up the boulders and coral beds that riddled the port. However, through an effort to comply with national environmental regulations, the unit shifted to employing other regulation-abiding channel clearing methods. Personnel from both Armed Forces Philippines and the U.S. military utilized lift bags slung around rocks to float them into deeper water, employed underwater hydraulic tools, and swung sledgehammers to break boulders. The team wrapped chain around boulders and attached a commercial landscaping rock grabber to pull rocks from the water. Divers implemented a non-explosive electric rock breaker (a Sierra Blaster) to fracture rocks into smaller pieces, and they contracted a 26-T commercial crane with a clamshell attachment to dredge the port.

With these methods, a total of 712-m³ of material was removed and placed on the pier to be repurposed by the Batanes community for other construction projects.

Handling Constraints

There were numerous operational setbacks without explosive demolition available. The various methods used to clear the port had variable effectiveness for channel clearing. Despite deepening the western edge of the channel by more than 1-m, many boulders surpassed the crane’s load capacity and exceeded 10-m³ in size. Without explosives, the detachment was unable to reduce these obstructions; this resulted in the largest obstructions remaining within the channel. The tidal action also contributed to navigational issues that reduced project proficiency. The crane barge could not efficiently move between its shallow excavation position and its offload point at the pier due to swaths of raised coral beds exposed in low tide.

Divers faced other challenges in clearing the channel. Lift bags were capable of floating large rocks but were time consuming. The vertical space in the water column required to employ the equipment rendered their use ineffective in regions shallower than 4-m. The distance from shore to the concentrated zone of rocks in the center of the port reduced the effectiveness of other methods. Hydraulic head loss across 300-ft of hydraulic line to the underwater jackhammer limited the team’s ability to mechanically reduce obstacles. Voltage drops in electric lines across the same distance prevented the effective use of the electric-based Sierra Blaster.

The detachment attempted various configurations of each method, but delays from securing environmental permitting led to only 20 percent completion of the desired clearance. Despite these setbacks, the divers found numerous additional means through which they could support daily port operations, including clearing fouled lines from boat propellers and recovering the dredging bucket during a mechanical failure.
The construction provided an immediate reduction of some navigational hazards for fishermen, but most importantly, it highlighted the invaluable partnership established between the Armed Forces Philippines and U.S. military divers and the varying effectiveness of removal efforts that complied with local regulations.

Joint Construction Lessons

The Basco port clearance operation resulted in numerous lessons learned for prospective improvements in the area.

• The project highlighted that future U.S.-based construction in the region needs to leverage partnerships with the Armed Forces Philippines and lean forward on environmental approvals, such as PAMB and ECC validation, early in the planning process.
• Although not utilized, future implementation of demolition for construction projects in foreign countries will require deliberate planning alongside partner militaries and governments in order to ensure compliance with both local and national regulations.
• Projects of this magnitude and scope require a significant time investment of military and contractual assets to ensure dredging success in remote environments. Being able to integrate commercial heavy machinery with military engineer dive assets is indispensable for port clearance and construction.

Prepared For Future Deployments

While the channel was not deepened to the full desired extent, the 7th Dive Detachment overcame many obstacles and recorded challenges to continue to pave the way forward for expeditionary port repair in the years to come.

The exercise still supported a vital sustainment node of the Batanes province, improved alliances, projected U.S. involvement in key infrastructure improvement projects at strategic locations, and positively strained logistical means to deploy forces west of the international date line.

The deployment also demonstrated the importance of aligning with local agencies through a U.S. embassy in order to ensure that construction efforts and project timelines are met.

Finally, the construction process and steps the engineers went through helped grow an understanding of the project nomination processes within the Filipino environmental and engineer offices.

Capt. Ander Thompson, P.E., PMP, M.SAME, is Company Commander, and 1st Lt. Sarah Guzzo, M.SAME, is Executive Officer, 7th Engineer Dive Detachment, 84th Engineer Battalion.

They can be reached at ander.j.thompson.mil@army.mil; andsarah.j.guzzo.mil@army.mil.

Article published in The Military Engineer, November-December 2024

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