Conley Terminal Berth 11 & 12 Backlands Reconstruction, Boston, MA

Massport’s Paul W. Conley Container Terminal is a vital economic asset for New England, serving more than 2,500 regional businesses, including 700 enterprises based in rural areas. As New England’s only deep-water, full-service container terminal, this 101-acre facility services an average of four to five vessels per week.

To maintain its competitiveness, in 2014 Massport launched the Conley Terminal Modernization Program, an $850 million investment in the Port of Boston’s maritime infrastructure. The initiative included rehabilitation of two existing berths (Berths 11 and 12), expansion of the terminal onto an adjacent site via both the construction of a new deep-water Berth 10 as well as construction of additional container yard storage areas, and a Boston Harbor deepening project led by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

One of the key projects of the program was rehabilitation of the backland container area behind Berths 11 & 12. This area is the most utilized area within the busy Terminal and is used for the interim storage of thousands of shipping containers unloaded from vessels, prior to their being picked up by trucks for delivery to consumers throughout the region. Originally constructed in the 1980’s, the long-term degradation of the yard pavements and drainage infrastructure under decades of heavy industrial use had resulted in sinkholes, differential settlement of pavements and concrete crane runways, and water ponding that froze in the winter, causing unsafe and inefficient operating conditions for personnel and cargo-handling equipment.

Completed ahead of schedule and under budget, the Conley Terminal Berth 11 & 12 Backlands Reconstruction Project used an innovative, and sustainable, approach to correct these issues by utilizing a full-depth pavement reclamation and recycling process to reuse the materials in-place. This approach reduced waste, costs and operational down-time by both eliminating off-site disposal of existing asphalt, as well as import of sub-base materials.