Residents unhappy with tidal pool recommendations

THE prevailing mood at the proposed uMhlanga tidal pool on Thursday night was one of discontent. Indeed the biggest cheer of the night was received when one of the speakers proposed doing nothing as one of the options the team of specialists had looked at when carrying out their studies to formulate their recommendation to council.

More than 40 residents attented the meeting which was intended to present and take questions on the specialist studies that have been undertaken for the application and to indicate the conclusions that are being drawn from the information. A few residents however felt the meeting though informative, was ostensibly in favour of the tidal pool going ahead despite the findings. The propsed uMhlanga tidal pool, set for implementation is in between the pier and lighthouse.

Negative impacts on bio-diversity in proposed tidal pool site

A number of aspects were looked at including a bio-diversity, social, economic and traffic impact assessments. The first few slides in the presentation dealt with the tidal pool being an option due to the chronic erosion due to the reduction in the sand supply.

Barry Clark (Anchor Environmental), who presented the bio-diversity impact discussed the significant negative local impacts on bio diversity that are likely to occur from the proposed tidal pool at Lighthouse Reef. He added the numerous negative impacts collectively indicate that an alternative site should be strongly considered.

“The significance of the majority of negative impacts can be considerably mitigated by choosing an alternative site that does not have such high bio diversity value. It is recommended that the Black Rock site should be further investigated as indications are that it may have significantly less bio diversity importance.

“The proposed site of the tidal pool had by far the highest diversity of fishes with 30 species from 18 different families.Many of these species, particularly the surgeons and important linefish species such as spotted grunter and yellowbelly rockcod were not found at the other sections of reef,” Clark said.

The most controversial study of the night was the social impact study which included a quantitative questionnaire which many of the residents and ward councillor Heinz de Boer dismissed as flawed due to the research methods because the number of property owners and residents were far outweighed by timeshare owners who numbered in their thousands, while the numbers of the property owners and residents numbered in their hundreds.

Not a single person in agreement

WARD councillor, Heinz de Boer, said a number of residents were upset by the meeting because he felt the recommendations of the various studies were in favour of the tidal pool going ahead.

“Not a single person was in agreement with the proposed tidal pool or the studies conducted. Most of the information was not what we expected and rather than being based on facts, it was mainly theoretical. The data for the social impact study was questionable and not at all representative.

“Most importantly, the purpose of the tidal pool construction is to save sand but what each of the speakers failed to highlight was with the onset of global warming and rising sea levels, in 30 to 40 years, the sea level would have risen to such an extent that the tidal pool would be underwater,” he said.

De Boer urged residents and interested parties to email their objections, which need to be detailed and specific to susan@enviroconsult.co.za