Digging up dirt: Coast Guard dock in St. John's gets $4M upgrade
Some 5,400 cubic metres of soil will be hauled out of St. John's harbour by February, as part of a $4-million upgrade to the Canadian Coast Guard Atlantic headquarters.
Harbourside improvements were announced on Friday afternoon in St. John's.
About 450 truckloads of soil will be dug out of the Coast Guard dock, to allow the fleet's larger vessels to use the wharf adjacent to the headquarters.
Currently, those vessels are restricted to the north side of St. John's harbour.
The dredging will deepen the harbour on the south side by about one metre.
According to Craig Hogan, a director at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, that's enough to make a real difference to the fleet.
"It just makes things run smoother and more efficient," he said. "The operation is here at the wharf, on this side."
Cheaper, faster loading
Quick access to the headquarters means faster loading and unloading of buoys and other materials, he said.
It eliminates the costs of having to offload on the opposite side of the harbour, and removes the worry of transporting materials from one side of town to the other.
"It just makes life a lot easier for the personnel here," said St. John's South-Mount Pearl MP Seamus O'Regan.
Work is already underway. On Friday, an orange excavator sitting on a barge was already dredging up dirt near the headquarters.
The job is being done by RJG Construction of St. John's and will continue until February 2017.
