BATH, Maine — A Coast Guard ice-breaking mission on Maine’s Kennebec River was the shortest in recent memory. That’s because the Coast Guard found no ice whatsoever on the 22-mile stretch from Bath to Gardiner.
The Coast Guard had three 65-foot icebreakers for Monday’s mission, which was aimed at breaking ice from Merrymeeting Bay to Gardiner to reduce the risk of ice jams and flooding as snow and ice melt.
Chief Warrant Officer Bob Albert, ice mission manager, says the vessels chugged up the river Monday morning but found no ice. The mission was declared over at 11:30 a.m.
Blame for the lack of ice goes to an unseasonably warm winter. There weren’t enough cold days to create river ice that’s normally thick enough to support ice-fishing shacks.
They couldn’t make a few phone calls first saving big bucks? How about at least a satellite image.
Waste of resources and money.
The satellite imaging commonly available through Google Earth and others is not realtime information. It can be delayed by as much as weeks. As for phone calls, you may have a good point there if the Coast Guard had a list of checkpoints that they could call for information.
It’s the coast guard. I think they have access to things other than google earth.
Sorry, Apparently not or knot.
For less than $200.00 they could have chartered a light plane to survey it and saved a few thousand dollars in fuel.
Glad others thought of what I did when reading this…. WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY! Plane, phone calls, satellite, or how about just taking a drive to the various towns along the river??? That would have give all the information needed to know that they didn’t need to take out 3 boats and waste all that money. But hey, it’s free money right? Comes from the government…. Don’t they realize it’s taxpayer money?
But…but…we had these boats. See?
Oh yeah, and climate change is a hoax.
The Title is incorrect.
The Coast Guard knew full well that there was no ice on the river. They discussed cancelling the mission, but decided to use it as a river navigation and training evolution between the 3 Cutters from 3 different bases.
The BDN is painting the USCG as inept, they need to change the title and apologize