The Hudson River was dotted with piers and docks that served railroads and shipping lines in the 19th century. One of them stands in the way of a 21st Century rail project.

About 500 old wooden piles from the old Pier 68 still remain buried in the Hudson River despite the actual pier and building being demolished decades ago. And those piles are in the path of the Gateway Hudson River tunnel project.

The remnants of 19th century New York are about to be cleared to make way for the $16 billion Hudson River rail tunnels between New York and New Jersey. Pier 68 served the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western railroad, which also owned Hoboken Terminal across the river.

But first, the old wooden piles must be extracted one at a time from the river, like so many decaying teeth. And that will cost the Gateway Development Commission an additional $88 million. The commissions board approved a contract with Weeks Marine on Wednesday to do the work.

“These piles are roughly 50 feet long, give or take, and some of them actually that we found and pulled out are old trees with what they used as piles in the 1800s,” said Jim Strace, Gateway Chief of Program Delivery.

The piles are in the way of both future tunnel boring to start under the Hudson River in 2028 and an ongoing Hudson River ground stabilization project.

That project has created a cofferdam in the river where construction workers are mixing grout with soil on a 1,200-foot-long section of the riverbed. The mixture ensures the riverbed is firm enough for the tunnel boring machines to drill through off the Manhattan coast.

That project is more than 75% done, but the wooden piles have to be removed before it can be completed. Work on both projects can happen simultaneously so time isn’t lost, he said.

“A tunnel boring machine can bore through a small number of wooden piles efficiently, Strace said. ”However, the large number of piles from Pier 68 could interfere with the tunnel boring operation.”

“Because of the high concentration of piles in this section of the river, it was deemed necessary to remove as many piles as possible in advance of the tunnel boring operation,” he said.

A video showed a large crane pulling a long pile out of the river with a clamp.

There is a possibility that some piles may break as they are being extracted from the riverbed, and the project also includes strengthening the soil in the riverbed by filling in holes where the piles were and to stabilize the portions of the piles that remain, and will be bored through, Strace said.

Pile removal will start later this year and is scheduled to be completed before tunnel boring begins in 2028.

The commission also observed the second anniversary of the Federal Transit Administrations award of a $6.88 billion grant to the Gateway Project on July 8, 2024. It is the largest federal grant in history and commission officials were eager to show how it’s being used.

Of the seven gateway construction projects for which contracts have been awarded, one is complete, the new Routes 1&9 bridge in North Bergen over the new tunnel mouth and rail right of way.

Two others are 75% complete, the Hudson River ground stabilization project and the Hudson Yards’ third tunnel box that will house tracks from the new tunnel to Penn Station New York, scheduled for a late 2026-early 2027 completion.

Others are under construction or preparing to begin.

“A project as large and complex as the Hudson Tunnel Project brings new challenges every day. The progress we have made in the two years since we signed our Full Funding Grant Agreement was not guaranteed when the agreement was signed,” said Tom Prendergast, GDC CEO.

“It is the result of hundreds of men and women showing up and working hard day in and day out for the past two years,” he said praising construction workers and the engineers and staff that keep the project moving.

Gateway was first proposed by Amtrak in 2011. It took on greater urgency when a 2014 engineering report commissioned by Amtrak warned of the need to rehabilitate the existing tunnels due to deterioration from river water driven by Hurricane Sandy into the tunnels.

Train capacity would be cut by 75% if one tunnel is shut down for a year to rehabilitate, Amtrak officials said.

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