Durban is slowly becoming a seaside city without any sand

[Binary_Bark]

Durban is becoming a seaside city without any sand as strong waves pummel its beaches and the city's sand pumping efforts come to naught.

Swathes of what used to be wide stretches of sand are now under water and beachside infrastructure, including a booster pump station at Dairy Beach, is being destroyed.

Coastal activists and regular beach users blame the eThekwini municipality for the state of the beaches. But the municipality says it is doing all it can in the face of climate change and "overmining" of sand in the province.

Johnny Vassilaros, a paddle skier who heads up the Save Vetch's Association says: "Basically it seems Durban has run out of sand. The city spent millions of rand building a new sand pumping station on the Point, which is completely dysfunctional.

"It is unable to replenish the city's beaches with sand. It can only pump sand as far as Addington and is incapable of reaching the main beaches where the sand is actually needed.

"In two weeks we shall be experiencing the autumn equinox tides, and if they coincide with a huge swell, there will be huge damage, perhaps even more than we had in March 2007. The reason is simply [that] there is no sand to absorb the pounding surf."

Warning in 2009 report

Vassilaros says the city dumped millions of tons of sand at Vetch's Beach and Addington hoping littoral drift would transport the sand to the central beaches.

Instead it had smothered the reef and killed off marine life.

"They then attempted to dump sand directly from the dredger, but only dumped it several hundred metres offshore, which of course served no purpose.

"They also tried to pump onto the beach at Snake Park by towing a long pipe out to sea and using the dredger to pump the sand onto the beach. That failed too as a huge swell arrived, smashing the 500m pipe into pieces which got washed ashore."

Oceanographic and air quality specialist Lisa Guastella said she had co-authored a report in 2009 warning of the effects of a beachfront upgrade.

"We warned that sand augmentation was essential to maintain the beach and should the sand pumping scheme fail for any reason, erosion was to be expected," she said.

https://www.news24.com/Green/News/p...ming-a-seaside-city-without-any-sand-20180315

 

[Kosmik]

I certainly think the sea levels are rising, I remember the beaches being a lot larger as a child, even major dunes down by addington and whats now ushaka.

 

[LazyLion]

The entire planet is changing.
People accept that e-mc[SUP]2[/SUP], but they won't accept the reality of climate change.
Some science just doesn't fit their politics or conspiracy theories.

 

[ToxicBunny]

This is largely the effect of climate change..

Durbans beachs are naturally not wide, the piers and sand pumping have allowed much wider beaches.

 

[KleinBoontjie]

I certainly think the sea levels are rising, I remember the beaches being a lot larger as a child, even major dunes down by addington and whats now ushaka.

Naah, I go to sea and catch fish a lot. Most beaches looks the same to me, as to when I was a kids in the 80's.

That pic on the article, you can see the reason for Durban's beach disappearing. To build that wide walk way, they had to throw rocks and paving there, therefore, less beach. Same happened at Strand(Somer-Set West).

 

[AstroTurf]

Naah, I go to sea and catch fisk a lot. Most beaches looks the same to me, as to when I was a kids in the 80's.

That pic on the article, you can see the reason for Durban's beach disappearing. To build that wide walk way, they had to throw rocks and paving there, therefore, less beach. Same happened at Strand(Somer-Set West).

Yea I agree, the walkway is what is causing this.
Warner/Doonside and all the rest, still the same amount of sand as when I was a kid.

 

[ToxicBunny]

I disagree that its the walkway... the walkway didn't cannibalise parts of the beach, it largely poached land from the opposite side.... and the photos being used in the article are the typical emotive nonsense, they're all from a very large storm that smashed the coast.

 

[LazyLion]

Why not dump some more of those Dolosse there in those areas? How much do the Dolosse cost?

 

[aapkop]

https://zululandobserver.co.za/163116/lighthouse-ever-closer-toppling/

December, the base of the lighthouse stood five metres from the edge; since then, another two metres have eroded.

When it was commissioned in 1979, the lighthouse – which has a range of 25 sea miles – stood 300 metres from the ocean.

 

[KleinBoontjie]

https://zululandobserver.co.za/163116/lighthouse-ever-closer-toppling/

Erosion is also one of the causes of this. Just look how a river mouth can move or close. I highly doubt that the sea levels is rising as much as some predicts.

 

[Nerfherder]

Thing is that beaches move all the time, global warming is happening which is speeding some of that up but the real problem is that people have built houses within 100m of the beach.

In some cases even 1km from the beach is just stupid.

 

[Cray]

I disagree that its the walkway... the walkway didn't cannibalise parts of the beach, it largely poached land from the opposite side.... and the photos being used in the article are the typical emotive nonsense, they're all from a very large storm that smashed the coast.

This...

 

[Kosmik]

Naah, I go to sea and catch fish a lot. Most beaches looks the same to me, as to when I was a kids in the 80's.

That pic on the article, you can see the reason for Durban's beach disappearing. To build that wide walk way, they had to throw rocks and paving there, therefore, less beach. Same happened at Strand(Somer-Set West).

I grew up on the beachfront in the 80's ( point road local ). The beaches have shrunk significantly. Yes they took a small bit of the sand to make the promenade but not a lot, maybe 2-3metres. The sea levels were lower, just look at the old rocks by vetch, they used to be heavily uncovered, now they are well submerged with the odd peak coming out.

 

[konfab]

This is a bad thing for people in other seaside cities. We will get all the beachgoing migrants from Durban.

As for people talking climate change. How much have the tides risen in lets say the past 40 years?

Climate change has produced an 8 inch rise in water levels since 1880. It might be a part of the problem but I think there are much stronger forces at play here. The most obvious being the harbour.

Given that demolishing the harbour is not exactly economically feasible, the best way forward IMO is to install artifical reefs. They take away most of the power of waves whilst creating a marine ecosystem.
http://www.thereefjournal.com/files/18._Harris.pdf

 

[Ninja'd]

So what you're saying is the New Year's crowds are getting smaller each year?

 

[Lupus]

I certainly think the sea levels are rising, I remember the beaches being a lot larger as a child, even major dunes down by addington and whats now ushaka.

I went down in 2016 to Toti and I do remember going there as a kid and the beaches definitely were bigger.

 

[Slootvreter]

So what you're saying is the New Year's crowds are getting smaller each year?

 

[Cray]

Given that demolishing the harbour is not exactly economically feasible, the best way forward IMO is to install artifical reefs. They take away most of the power of waves whilst creating a marine ecosystem.

The surfers are sharpening their pitchforks....

 

[ToxicBunny]

This is a bad thing for people in other seaside cities. We will get all the beachgoing migrants from Durban.

As for people talking climate change. How much have the tides risen in lets say the past 40 years?


Climate change has produced an 8 inch rise in water levels since 1880. It might be a part of the problem but I think there are much stronger forces at play here. The most obvious being the harbour.

Given that demolishing the harbour is not exactly economically feasible, the best way forward IMO is to install artifical reefs. They take away most of the power of waves whilst creating a marine ecosystem.
http://www.thereefjournal.com/files/18._Harris.pdf

The harbour having an effect? Would you mind explaining that a bit?

 

[Binary_Bark]

The surfers are sharpening their pitchforks....

There is a specially nice sand bank at North Beach that creates some gnarley waves, but that is some time ago