Groynes needed at Ettalong

The hundreds of tonnes of sand excavated some years ago from the now Mantra Resort construction site were dumped on the beach at Ettalong in almost the same position as where the sand from the current dredging is being stockpiled.

The Mantra sand was washed away within months and erosion of the beach, if anything, accelerated.

If that was an exercise in re-establishing a beach, it was a total and avoidable disaster.

Following this apparently very poor exercise in engineering, I wrote to council suggesting that to prevent any occurrence, correctly designed, positioned, and constructed groynes were an obvious solution to the problem.

For centuries, such groynes have successfully protected the many very exposed beaches around the coastlines of the UK and Western Europe from the fury of severe winter storms.

To date in the reclamation, it appears that Gosford Council engineers have again seen fit to ignore Mother Nature by not building groynes or other sand retaining measures.

As a result, the dredged sand is already being washed back into Brisbane Waters.

If there are no plans to promptly construct groynes or similar protective measures on the beach, the council should immediately sack those responsible for this stupidity and waste of rate-payers money, and commence construction of some means of retaining the sand on the beach.

Letter, 10 Oct 2013

Barrie Peters, Ettalong