Saturday, 13 March 2010

Sea Wall under Scrutiny Again




Excellent article making the Cover and page 3 of the D Scene this week.
Local surfer Mark Stevenson shines the light on the ongoing issue of poor maintenance and work practices over the St Clair Sea Wall.
I believe the responce by the DCC to defer any 'work or maintenance' until a report is back over erosion at Middle Beach (due to be finalised by the end of 2012) is too long to wait to address simple issues of maintenance and public safety. When in fact there is already an independant "St Clair Seawall Peer Review" published by OCEL consulatnts in February 2006. This covers failures of the sea Wall since its construction, its structural capacity, failure of function, solutions and responses to the public and a city councillor. Why wasn't anything heeded from that review?

Waiting to address issues this way is incompetent. This is exactly what the DCC did with the Sand Sausages adjacent to the Sea wall. They put off doing any maintenance work on them as they became exposed, although it was allowed in the consent conditions. To ensure they "be maintained in a state of operational repair to ensure their effectiveness without the need to apply for additional consents". Instead they did nothing and opted to wait for a potentially lengthy public consultation process over sand mining at Tomahawk.
In the mean time, the sand sausages were completely exposed over time, contributing to increased erosion events right along the dune area to middle beach and St Kilda in 2007.
It was only the 'sabotage' of these sand sausages that allowed them to do the necessary work to bring the due system back in to some kind of equilibrium.
see related post here: phoam.blogspot.com/sand sausage deterioration over 18months

I seriously hope that the DCC will take action sooner, now that the public has been again informed, thanks Mark.

If you are interested please check out related posts on Sea Wall Issues, The failing steps and Ramp here: phoam.blogspot.com/search/label/Sea Wall Steps & Sand

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Duffill Watts (now CPG) were rsponsible for the design of these structures. as rate payers, i have no idea why we have paid these so called consultants when they haven't delivered. This really is a matter for the DCC and ORc to chase up.

again, maybe it has fallen into the too hard basket but it is disgraceful that this has been allowed to continue for so long. If this were a dodgy paving stone in George St then it would probably be an entirely different manner....


finny

Neville said...

Not once in the "Z Boys and Dogtown" Documentary did any of the locals complain about the re-bar and junk at their spot!
You surf in the Concrete jungle relish it .

nic on 16 March, 2010 13:47 said...

deleted a few posts that were inappropriate,
apologies.

 

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