Bonavista seeks solution for damaged sea fence
BONAVISTA — Bonavista has breaches in its last line of defence against the pounding surf after the sea fence surrounding the community sustainined damage during the Jan. 17 blizzard.
And the longer they have to wait to get it fixed, the longer residents are exposed. “If there’s no sea fence, the ground is going to crumble,” Bonavista town manager David Hiscock said.
With the community left exposed, another major storm could mean roadways, water and sewer, private land and even buildings could be lost to the waves.
Hiscock has already been in touch with engineers, as well as Municipal Affairs and Environment Minister Derrick Bragg, to try to find a solution as quickly as possible.
He’s getting estimates for repairs and replacement to tap into disaster mitigation funding.
Hiscock says, for the longterm future of the town and the changing climate, all of the area needs armour stone — large, dense boulders —instead of wooden fences.
“Wooden fence is just not going to handle the surge … we’ve
been getting lately. That’s climate change.” However, armour stone is expensive and Hiscock says it’s also harder to come by and costly to transport. In addition, the massive rocks can’t be used too close to roads because of space and traffic visibility considerations. In these cases, Hiscock says they may be able to put the stones nearer to the shore, supplemented by fences closer to the roads, on the inside of the large boulders.
He wouldn’t want to do a simple fix only for the same thing to happen again during a similar situation, he said.
“You’ve only got to look at the map to see where we are — whichever way the wind is, we’re right exposed to the North Atlantic.”
The town hadn’t received a ballpark cost as of Friday, but Hiscock says work with armour stone on the government pier in the past cost as much as $2 million, for a much smaller job.
That area was 500 feet, while the sea fence areas needing attention adds up to 2,700 feet. There are six areas most at risk with exposure due to damage — Red Point, Moses Point, Newman’s Point, Rolling Cove, Swyers Beach and Mockbeggar.
For the time being, the stakes for residents are high.
In some areas, such as Red Point, the waves could eat away at the cribbing under the street and cause problems for the road, and the water and sewer issues for about 100 homes in the area.
“Under the pavement is only gravel. … An hour and (it would be) gone. And then there’s the water and sewer.
“If it happens in the middle of the winter, how hard is that going to be to do?”
On Swyers Beach, there were large rocks on the side of the road already. But the land gave way beneath them and they rolled down to the beach and were covered by snow.
Hiscock expects some houses, like those on Newman’s Point, would have to be evacuated in another big storm.
“Where that washed out there, that’s 100 feet from the road in there and we had cribbing in there — 100 feet from the cribbing, so the sea had to come into the road.”
Hiscock says he was amazed with how much the ocean came into shore during the storm on Jan. 17-18.
He says it’s an emergency situation that ranks far higher than any other repair concerns or snowclearing issues.
“If they got any money to give us, put it to the sea fences because if they don’t they’re going to have a disaster and have all kinds of infrastructure gone, and personal property, too.”