I TOTALLY agree with your concerns re the beach line north of Alkantstrand.
I have been involved in dredging, mining and beach reclamation over the past 30 years in South Africa.
The authorities understand the reasons why the frontal dune systems are being eroded.
Simply put, its owing to the Richards Bay harbour and the fact that our sand bypass programme is non-existent.
Look at Durban harbour, they would have the same problem (no beaches) if they had not spent on their new bypass sand pumping scheme. About 300 000m³ of sand is required to maintain the beaches and compensate for loss of drift sand.
Portnet, dredging services and the eThekwini municipality have all the engineering expertise to solve the problem here in Richards Bay.
For the beaches to stabilise we need to achieve the equivalent of natural northerly drift of sand as used to happen before the harbour was built.
This was understood by the engineers that built Richards Bay harbour – a Dutch conglomerate. That’s why we have a bypass line.
If Portnet had the dredging capacity available, they could remove sand from the sand trap south of the harbour entrance, then use the short bypass line at the rear of Alkantstrand to pump onto the beach.
This, coupled with close to shore dumping north of the harbour with hopper dredgers also taking sand from south of the harbour, would solve our problem, taking the place of the natural sand drift stopped by the harbour construction.
