Dear Editor,
First of all I want to say that I agree with most of what was presented by Ted Barron at the October 3 Council
meeting.
To say that the Muskrat Watershed Council (MWC) invested approximately $35 ,000 in the aerators should be corrected. To purchase the aerators the Whitewater Region Council gave the MWC a one-time grant of $16,000 and an interest free loan of $16,000 to be fully paid back by 2020.
If they had done their research the MWC would have discovered that the water in the top approximately 4-5 meters of Muskrat Lake is already saturated with oxygen which means the aerators at the beach area are of no value.
In that agreement the aeration system belongs to Whitewater Region. I suggest that Whitewater Region Council sell the aerators and get back the taxpayers $16 thousand.
Cobden needs tourism. I suspect that the fishermen that come here in tournaments contribute to the economy of Whitewater just as much as some other activities. They park near the rink as there’s a shortage of space at the boat launch area. Lack of parking space is also evident during the Cobden fair when cars are parked on most streets in Cobden.
There’s no question that the boat launch needs fixing. I put my boat in Muskrat Lake in July and due to the low water level I had to back in so far that I had 3 inches of water in my truck cab.
He was also correct about the lack of benches, garbage bins and flowers on main street. When you look down main street it looks like a ghost town compared to other towns in Renfrew County.
At the beach there are open garbage bins and the gulls take out the garbage looking for food. Most mornings in the summer I look across the lake at the beach and the beach has lots of gulls on it. No wonder the beach is covered with gull excrement making it essentially unusable.
Donald W. Deer P.Eng. of Cobden
