A bit behind with posting, forgot to put these up last week. Below: A wave from the other day at an unnamed surf spot.
Below: The two houses are gone, every scrap of their existance has been removed, the topsoil/sand has been stripped/levelled in preparation for the building work to begin on the Hotel development
Above left: another view of the prepared ground, Above right: From Forbury Road.. the new beauty salon's construction is well underway.. below, caitlin takes a photo on the wee pentax while driving past of the beauty salon. with her image caught in the wing mirror.
Above: Misty sunset, Brighton
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5 comments:
Is that sand exposed under the topsoil? - is the Hotel actually being built on the natural backdune?
It looks like it.. and would be in the correct position in relation to the shoreline to be so.
So whats the big mystery about the causes of erosion at this beach (and therefore whats needed to fix it)?
Its a no brainer!!!
Clearly the sea wall is an absolutely unatural barrier to natural movement of sand between the sea and land - how can this area build up sand supplies to compensate for even "natural" erosive cycles affecting this beach let alone erosion driven by global warming, sea level rise and associated storm events which you can bet will be getting a lot worse sooner than most people believe?
Worse - the sea wall is vertical! -Sea walls are bad enough on open beaches but it is well recognised that a vertical wall is the most destructive angle you can build in a high energy open environment - the scouring of sand in front of the wall is patently obvious so is the erosion at the end of the wall because of its design - classic "end wall" effect - as is the accelerated lowering of the whole beach profile arguably since the wall was constructed - of course this has nothing to do with the sea wall - mere coincidence - yeah right!!
And theres more!!
The majority of the beach and dune system along the rest of this beach is unnatural - its reclaimed land which used to be a massive bay. Its obvious that the sea is just trying to claim it back !!
But wait theres more!
The beach / dune system along the reclaimed stretch of beach is obviously dysfunctional as well! - there is not enough beach face or frontal dune area to facilitate the operation of the natural beach / dune "sand pump" (thats the natural process whereby sand moves between the sea and the land)- when you have 10 metre high dunes coming straight up from a narrow beach face with no frontal dune the beach is simply going to keep losing more sand than it can store.
The whole beachface and frontal dune area of this beach needs to be reprofiled if this beach is to be saved!
Despite what DCC has been saying the methods it has applied so far simply havent been effective and thats mainly because they havent adressed the causal factors of erosion at this site. In other words DCC have been trying to treat symptoms not causes (and even the methods they have used for this are recognosed globally to be ineffective).
Forget sand replenishment (youll have to take it from somewhere else which will stuff that area up ) and youll break the ratepayers backs paying for it!
Forget hard engineering methods like more sea walls and rock mattresses as well - high energy surf beaches havent taken kindly to these methods anywhere in the world so why should they work at this site?
Nic, you and Tracey are onto it with the "Soft Shore Protection" methods that you both presented in your submission to DCC recently - this is the only sustainable way this beach can profiled.
Rather than wasting more taxpayers money on more erosion protection experimentation and symptomatic treatment at this beach DCC should be supporting your call for "Soft Shore Protections" methods to be investigated especially where a particular method has been proven to work.
Perhaps you could run another poll on this blog seeing what percentage of vistors would support your submission to DCC that it should seriously investigate soft shore protection methods especially if a particular method has a proven track record?
Here here! Whoever wrote that summed up my sentiments and those of probably many others in the area, exactly!! The soft shore protection idea is clearly the ONLY realistic way to go... So where to from here?
where to is the big question!
we need a pair of red tape cutters for a start.
The timeline for the future proposals is already set and action needs to begin NOW.
will set out a plan in blog post after work today
Nic
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