NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP) — A $7.5 million dredging project designed to allow ships to more easily access Quonset’s Port of Davisville is getting under way — with the scoop of a massive dredging bucket that can lift two dump trucks’ worth of material at a time.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee and House Speaker Gordon Fox on Thursday toured a dredging vessel called “The 53” to mark the start of the project, which will entail scooping some 260,000 cubic yards of material from the channel’s bottom.