A perception of the engineering characteristics of dredged lake materials is necessary for making decisions regarding the size and type of hydraulic dredge best suited for the proposed project, dredge production rates, containment area size requirements, various containment area operating procedures, the nature of potential containment area reuse, the time necessary for the filled containment area to become available for reuse, and potential measures that may be used to increase the rate of improvement and ultimate strength characteristics of the dredged material in the containment area. The pertinent engineering characteristics are reasonably inferred from bulking, grain size distribution, specific gravity and organic content, Atterberg Limits, consolidation and shear strength data. Typical ranges for these data, including before and after dredging cases, as determined for several sites in the northeastern United States are presented. Significant differences in measured characteristics often occur among samples taken from the lake bottom, from the dredge effluent pipeline or from the containment area. The most important changes in dredged material composition resulting from the dredging and dredged material disposal process are the loss of fines and low specific gravity material. This change should be accounted for when planned dredging projects employ engineering data obtained from samples of lake material to be dredged.