Based upon VHF / marine band radio traffic and my observations from the field, or in this case the river this big dog is unloading a barge of dredge from elsewhere.   Most likely (again based upon what I saw while on the lake and river this weekend) there was significant dredging at the Whiskey Island fork in the Cuyahoga River.  The barge was basically about 500 feet east of Christy's and along the north bank of the river.  While on the water I heard security calls (announcments of large boats movments in confined areas on vhf channel 16) for barges going in and out of there.  At least one or two.   Not only that but this weekend... Saturday early afternoon say around 3-4pm we saw a huge crane barge and tug from the Army Corps of Engineers west bound inside the breakwall.   Never seen this vessel in our area before.

As for this portion of the Burke Dike.. I am not sure if it is lined with steel sheet pilings or not.   If this is the river dredge you can bet it has some nasty leftovers from our fair cities past and presented polluto-crat droppings.

They are pumping a lot of mud.  I have seen them doing it in the early AM hours (always makes me suspect). 

If I had seen this suction dredge Monday, I would have assumed that they were just sucking out the 50,000 toilet usages which didn't go down in the Brown Bowl.    Btw, how can it be that the maintenance folks at Brown Down can't find a broken pipe?  They say the reason there was no flush and water all over the restroom floors is because there was a broken 8 inch dia. pipe.  Something is really fishy here.  Can't find a broken 8" pipe?  And the same thing happened at a prior concert.  I think there is another problem - but what is it?

As for getting out on the lake....  I encourage everyone to get out on the lake by god.  Its our only realy piece of vast wilderness around.  It is a bit unaccessable because it requires access to things that float.

As for dredging, it is nasty.   There is much debate in the world about dredging.  Is it better to get the PCB's off the bottom of the Hudson River from GE.  Picking them up disturbs the sediment and bumps up bio-absorption on a huge level (temporarily).   Short term losses for long term gains?  Its quite hard to tell.    You may disturb and shake loose the equavalent of a few years worth of natural wave / current action with one dredging operation or you make shake loose 1000 years worth.   It depends on the contaminant.

A lot of the bottom of the Cuyahoga River I would imagine would have levels of contaminant.   that being said each day, week, month it carries tens, hundreds or thousands of metric tons of sediment down into our lake.

Most of the dredging around our area (inside the breakwall, on the cuyahoga river) is designed to pull out that sediment to keep the river at the appropriate depth.   At the bend in the river (north of shooters) that was being dredged this past weekend it would be to keep it at depth so that Cargil or sand and gravel barges and great lakes freighters can move in and out.  They may have 25+ feet of draft in a 30+ foot deep channel.  

I use to work at a place that had to do some dredging.  They had some water ski jumpers landing in to shallow of water.   We had to apply first for an EPA 401 Permit to dredge, then an 404 Permit from the Army Corp of Engineers.  It cost a lot of money but...  as they say... the show must go on.  And you cant have ski jumpers landing in a 2 foot deep lake.   
You also cant have ski boats running into the ski show stadium seating and crushing people.