UPDATE: New beach defence measures begin

THE filling of ‘geobags’ – large sandbags to be used as a coastal defence buffer wall – began this week at Alkantstrand.

The City of uMhlathuze, through contractors Leomat Construction, will over a three month period be laying over 1 000 geobags, each weighing 2.8tons, starting from the lifeguard house to a point about 200 metres northwards.

Intricate positioning of the geobags will begin next week.

The ‘soft engineering’ option was proposed in 2013 by the then Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs in its published Coastal Vulnerability Index fact sheet.

Delays in implementation, coupled with lack of dredge spoil being pumped onto the beaches, have seen steady erosion of the dune barrier during spring tides and tidal surges.

Objections

But while being welcomed in the sense of ‘better late than never’, the long overdue erection of a geobag dune protection line has also met with criticism.

Failure of the project to be subjected to an EIA process, the risk of bags splitting and polluting the ocean, and the filling of the bags from an already sand-starved point along the coastline, are prime objections.

The project will take about 100 days, of which 40 will be before the contractors’ break on 16 December, recommencing in mid-January.

It is expected the section closest to the lifeguard house will have been completed in time for the holiday season.