The sand used to build up the Bethany Beach shoreline comes from the ocean bottom, about 2 1/2 miles offshore.

Weeks Marine of Covington, La., completed the $20 million project, and did more work for the private beach communities of Sea Colony and Middlesex, which bookend Bethany and South Bethany.

Project manager Doug Nelson of Weeks said dredging started the week after Labor Day and was completed Feb. 23.

Two hopper dredges, the B.E. Lindholm and the R.N. Weeks (the latter named after the company's chairman), were used. Each is about 300 feet long and 55 feet wide.

Using two "drag arms" -- scoops -- on each side, crews of about 20 merchant marines on each dredge pull sand up from a "borrow area" that is between 40 and 50 feet deep. The sand is drained, taken to an unloading station -- a buoy -- where it is rehydrated and pumped through pipes to the shore.

There, crews with bulldozers put the sand in place according to the design worked out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mr. Nelson said.

"As we like to say, we didn't design it, we just built it," he added. So if some aspect of the design, such as the dunes, draws consternation, don't blame the dredger.

The operation made winter theater for those in Bethany during the colder months.

"It was fascinating to watch," said Carol Olmstead, mayor of Bethany Beach.

An estimated total of 3 million cubic yards of sand was moved, with an additional 450,000 cubic yards deposited at Sea Colony and Middlesex.

The project was mid-sized for Weeks, which Mr. Nelson said is one of only two or three companies that do ocean dredging. Weeks also replenished the beach at Ocean City, Md., last year.

Tony Pratt, of Delaware Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said that while the dredging does indeed kill ocean life, care is taken to minimize the impact.

"We spent a lot of time looking at the bottom to make sure what we're disrupting is commonly found everywhere else," Mr. Pratt says. None of it involves endangered species and most of the fish swim away.

Also, because the work is done in the winter the disruptions are minimized, he said.