Council committee learns more about dredging

Photo by Dan Jones, Northumberland 89.7 FM, LJI

By Cecilia Nasmith, Northumberland 89.7 FM News

Cobourg

As the annual dredging will soon begin in Cobourg, Director of Community Services Brian Geerts offered some information as a way to help councillors and staffers deal with the inevitable questions and complaints Wednesday at council's Community Services, Protection and Economic Development Standing Committee meeting.

Geerts began by contrasting harbours with the lakes that feed them. Harbours are havens of calm, while the lakes are active. The result is deposits of sand settling at the harbour entrance.

“It's the nature of harbours everywhere in the world to slowly fill in,” Geerts summed up.

He described dredging as “a very unusual municipal service. Many of the municipalities along Lake Ontario don't necessarily have their own dredge or dredging service.”

Cobourg didn't until about 15 years ago. They used to pay well over $100,000 a year to hire contractors for this work. Then they spent $600,000 for their own dredge - “not an inexpensive piece of equipment. It would probably cost $1-million to replace it now,” Geerts said.

“It allows us to do the work ourselves. We can do it precisely, exactly where we need it, and there are environmental benefits to this piece of equipment.”

The job can be done in a non-precision way, scooping up great bucketloads of bottom and disturbing the silt so it damages the habitat. The precision approach of the dredge is more like a vacuum, essentially soaking up the sand from the bottom, pumping it down the pipe and transporting it to the beach to dry out.

And with only 1.5 people required for the work, he added, “it's a significant operational savings, financially and environmentally.”