Unfortunately, the suction dredge employed by the port needed depths of more than 6m to dump spoil and when loaded was unable to dump sand close enough to Westshore to benefit the beach.
By design or good luck in June/July this year, the port hired a smaller suction dredge for scheduled maintenance to clean sand from the channel. This vessel with a loaded draft of 3m is able to discharge within 300m of the beach. The result, 88,324cu m of clean, fine sand was dumped north of the Westshore Surf Club. This material is vital for reinstating the huge amount of sand eroded from the nearshore and responsible for the steeper gradient, which council continues to overlook. This sand will also start replenishing the north end of Westshore Beach and eventually reach Bayview, Whirinaki and Tangoio.
This dredging work, at no cost to the ratepayer, will be an opportunity to see an improvement at the north end and after the next swell will show how the beach can be restored by regular dredging.
Like council finally canning the ridiculous offshore breakwater for a proper seawall, a better, cheaper, durable solution is now a reality for Westshore.
Unfortunately, the nearshore off Kiwi Beach is too shallow for the smaller dredge so slightly more expensive options need consideration to get sand south of the Surf Club where it can benefit. These options include pumping, jetting or trucking from areas of surplus. Rock revetment or a set-back seawall is a last-resort option.
A major blow for ratepayers waiting for a better solution was announced on Facebook by Mayor Dalton back in February. Council held workshops and seminars and decided Westshore erosion stays in the "too hard" basket and the solution is best handled by HB Regional Council. Rather than honour election promises to sort it out, councillors voted to hand the problem to a joint committee set up by the regional council to prepare a coastal strategy to address sea level rise in 50 years and 100 years.
The frustration continued when Napier council engineers put on record, for the Joint Coastal Strategy Committee, that "nourishment is holding the coastline for most of Westshore Beach". Technical advisers took this advice as true and accurate, so all sea level rise projections for 2065 and 2100 are based on Westshore Beach being in equilibrium and beach nourishment will continue for the long term. Not only is nourishment not working, it is not holding the coastline and the 30-year problem at Westshore has bugger all to do with climate change. Westshore erosion needs urgent attention and predicted sea level rise needs a long term strategy.
The Port of Napier should accept the Komar Report was merely a review of other reports. Reports between 1980 and 2003 did not mention the shipping channel, let alone the influence it had on coastal processes. Professor Komar's concluding statement "it's time to stop blaming the port" was referring to the many expert reports that wrongly blamed the breakwater for erosion. It was never "an exoneration" as claimed by Port of Napier management. Maybe time to adopt the LV Martin saying "it's the putting right that counts" and stop loading the escalating costs onto ratepayers not party to the problem.
-Larry Dallimore is a long-time Westshore resident and environmental campaigner.
-Business and civic leaders, organisers, experts in their field and interest groups can contribute opinions. The views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion, and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz
