Dredging at the Port of Vicksburg started Wednesday after repairs on a contract vessel delayed relief from the low Mississippi River for more than a month.

The Dredge Iowa, owned by Illinois-based Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company, began removing silt from Vicksburg Harbor after it arrived from Greenville this week. It has about 50 days of funding to dredge, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District.

Broken parts on the 32-foot-wide, 130-foot-long cutter suction dredge were mended after earlier stops on the river, said Corps spokesman Kavanaugh Breazeale. The vessel had dredged in Greenville and other spots on the east bank of the river since Sept. 7. Schedules released in June, when the Corps let a $6.84 million contract with the Iowa and two other privately owned vessels to relieve ports of near-record low stages, had estimated a Sept. 30 date for a dredge to reach Vicksburg’s port.

A rotating cutter on the 443-horsepower dredge excavates the river bottom and feeds loosened silt into the pipe-and-pump system, which moves the material elsewhere on the channel floor up to about six miles. The Jadwin, a 2,400-horsepowered dredge owned by the Corps and measuring 52 feet wide and 274 feet long, dredged the river’s main channel until mid-month and is back in dry-dock.

The river at Vicksburg was 2.23 feet this morning, up nearly seven-tenths of a foot. Forecasts by the National Weather Service Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center show the river rising to 8 feet in mid-November before dropping again at month’s end.

Material shipments to the port have slowed during the extended period of low water. Steel coils and corn made up the 12,467 tons unloaded in September. The total was down nearly a third compared to August.

“It’s still slow right now, as it can be at this time of year,” said port director Wayne Mansfield.