Long-term dredging solution needed

Again the dredge at Ettalong is not working due to sea conditions.

I thought that this dredge was meant to be an ocean-going one.

It is clearly not.

The emergency funding for the attempted dredging to date has cost around $1m which has and will prove money poorly spent.

To dredge or dig up the sand and only move it a short distance away from the channel, 100 to 300 metres, is an exercise in futility.

With this current stop in operation of the dredge being due to weather conditions, the removed sand will migrate back to where it came from.

With the $1m they will have spent when this round of dredging is complete, it could have been used more wisely in the first place by having an ocean-going dredge do the works in the first instance and the sand pumped back onto the beach.

When the channel silts up again in six months, what will they do then?

We need to have a long term solution not these band-aid fixes.

Email, 22 Aug 2018

Carl Veugen, Umina