A contract valued at TL 1.8 million million ($18 million) for cleaning the Golden Horn inlet off the Bosporus waterway in Istanbul has been awarded to a venture including the local Gulermak Agir Sanayii & Ticaret and the US' Southern Maryland Dredging. The client is Istanbul municipality.

The contract was awarded to the venture although it was not the lowest bidder when tenders were first submitted (MEED 29:11:96). The venture was selected after Istanbul mayor Tayyip Erdogan decided the project would not be funded by external credit, but by the municipality's own resources.

The project calls for the dredging of about 3 million tonnes of sludge from the inlet, starting from the Valide Sultan bridge, and working up to the mouths of the Kagithane and Alibeykoy streams. The sludge will be dumped in stone quarries three kilometres away, and the areas thus reclaimed will then be afforested. The work will take 16 months to complete.