Read a report that said we move more sediment than all the world's rivers combined

Sandra Wood · 2026-03-09T18:30:06.945698+00:00

I was looking at some old industry data from the Corps of Engineers and saw a stat that the global dredging fleet moves about 10 billion cubic meters of material a year. That's more than the total sediment load carried by all natural rivers on Earth, which blew my mind. Did anyone else know this, or have you seen other wild numbers about the scale of what we do?

kai4457mo ago

Wait, 10 billion cubic meters a year?

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nguyen.lily7mo ago

Yeah, that's a real number.

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robins837mo ago

That stat is like seeing how much we've paved over...

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margareto266mo ago

But rivers have been moving that stuff for millions of years. We're just catching up on port maintenance and flood control in a single century.

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