NEWS FLASH: COBOURG – The dredger that Councillor Bob Spooner has dubbed Captain Cobourg has begun to pay for itself, he announced at last week’s council meeting.
“Captain Cobourg is in the Whitby harbour, doing its first dredge job,” Spooner said.
“It’s getting its indoctrination into the Lake Ontario dredging business.”
“Part of the reason our council pursued that was that we felt we could go to other harbours and get revenue to offset the cost,” Mayor Peter Delanty reminded everyone.
The town had been hiring dredging services, but was inspired to purchase its own vessel by skyrocketing costs – $126,640 last year, up from $22.300 a decade ago. The expectation of these costs continuing to rise led consultant Ross Dudley to predict that the machine would pay for itself within five years, even without any extra revenue realized from contracting out the service to other municipalities.
Spooner said, at the time of purchase, that Whitby had expressed an interest in hiring the service.
Reprinted from Dredging Today
