READ: The slow death of Durban’s Vetch’s Pier

Despite the drawn out battle by the Save Vetch’s Association to save Vetch’s Beach and Pier, activist Johnny Vassilaros said this week the reef that the group fought “tooth and nail” for was now buried under sand, reports Berea Mail.

Vassilaros said it was sad that the treasured reef, once intended to be the northern breakwater of Durban harbour and the remnants of a disastrous project of the 1860s which had turned out to be a most valuable asset to the city of Durban, had been destroyed by the municipality’s sand-pumping scheme.

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“Vetch’s Pier provided its inhabitants and visitors a wonderful lifestyle in the form of snorkelling, spearfishing, a safe launch site for so many different recreational water sport activities, as well as becoming the largest inshore sub-tidal mussel bed in the entire province. It was estimated that it hosted 85 tons of mussels alone. I recall days of seeing crayfish, octopus, and numerous species of fish in their hundreds, barely five metres from the shore in knee-deep water. This reef is simply the main reason why there are any fish in the entire Vetch’s/Addington area,” he said.

However, he said currently this valuable asset was dying and even in good weather, only a handful of snorkelers could be seen along the reef.

A photo of the pier in 1860.

Vetch’s Pier in a spring low tide in the 1990s.

Before: Vetch’s Pier in 1990.

After: The rock in its current position.

According to Vassilaros, years ago Durban was proud to have perhaps the largest and most efficient sand-pumping scheme in the world. It was easy to replenish the beachfront by pumping sand at will to a precise section of the beach where it was actually required. Today, however, more than 30 years later, the new pumping scheme was incapable of doing that. It was only able to pump sand up to the Addington area and no further.

“For the last ten years or so, the municipality has been dumping thousands of tons of sand on Vetch’s Beach and hoping the northern-bound littoral drift will carry the load to the central and northern beaches. But this does not happen. While a small amount of sand does find its way to the northern beaches, most of the sand simply flows out to sea, burying Vetch’s Pier with all its inhabitants in its path and smothering Limestone Reef as well as all the other small reefs in the area. Today, the first two hundred metres of Vetch’s Pier is totally buried under tons of sand and lost forever,” he said.

Vassilaros said this practice has had a catastrophic effect on the marine life in the area, not only by destroying their habitat, but, as the sediment clogs fish’s gills they simply avoided the area altogether. He added several species had disappeared completely from the beachfront. In addition, the over-supply of sand had pushed the sea so far back that the intake pipes of uShaka beneath Moyo’s Pier are left high and dry, affecting the flow of fresh seawater to the aquarium.

The over-supply of sand has pushed the sea so far back that the intake pipes of uShaka beneath Moyo’s Pier are left high and dry.

“Further north on our main beaches, which are undoubtedly our biggest tourist attraction, the situation is completely different. People will remember the state of our beachfront earlier last year where there was not one grain of sand on our central beaches and sandbags were placed to defend our promenade from the crashing waves.

“Being incapable of pumping the sand themselves, the municipality relied on the Transnet dredger to pump directly onto those beaches, costing ratepayers a cool R19.4 million. The coastal engineering department of Durban stated that they had pumped a quarter of a million cubic metres of sand on the beachfront, but what they failed to mention, is that they had pumped it on the wrong beach and the damage to the environment they caused,” he said.

Trent van Ballegooyen and Cameron Burt look for creatures on Vetch’s Reef. Only a few rocks are still visible at low tide.

Vassilaros said with the extension of the promenade on Vetch’s Beach currently under construction, he foresaw the city would continue to dump tons of sand to defend the infrastructure from high seas.

“I cannot see this reef with all its once-abundant marine life surviving for much longer. It will be a great loss to the people of Durban, our municipal leaders should hang their heads in shame,” he said.

eThekwini municipality responds

Msawakhe Mayisela, senior manager of media relations at eThekwini municipality, said the coastal department used a 900 diameter pipe to pump sand up to Addington Beach due to the sand-pumping scheme being inoperable.

“The sand-pumping scheme has not worked for years as in the early 2000s during the harbour widening, Transnet had to demolish the municipality’s hopper station which received sand/sediment dredged from the harbour entrance channel in an effort to maintain its depth. In turn, Transnet supply the Municipality with this sediment/sand to replenish its beaches from Vetch’s to Bay of Plenty. In demolishing the hopper station, all the booster stations had to be decommissioned until a new hopper station was built. Unfortunately, this has taken forever and it was only in June last year that the new hopper station was built and commissioned with some challenges,” said Mayisela.

Scum washes up on the beachfront as a result of pumping.

Mayisela said once fully operational, the coastal department would test and commission the booster stations and bring these back into use.

“The allegation that the pumping of sand onto the beach has destroyed Vetch’s reef is an exaggeration of the facts. While we acknowledge that in trying to get the necessary beach width some of the reefs have been compromised, this has not been quantified nor confirmed to be as a direct result,” said Mayisela.

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