Storm rips up West Coast beach
Three-year-old Chloe Schwass loves the beach near her grandmother’s Westport house.
But Carters Beach did not look the same after Thursday’s storm, her father Ben Schwass said.
‘‘When the big swells came in it took a few metres off [the foreshore]. The storm lifted away quite a lot of it,’’ he said. ‘‘I was expecting it to happen eventually, but not so quickly.’’
Rising sea levels, pushed west by gradual extensions to training walls on the Buller River, have slowly eroded the shoreline at Carters Beach over the past century. Though the rate of erosion appears to have slowed in the past decade, it is expected 6 metres of shoreline will be lost each year.
In a report to the Buller District Council in June, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) engineers said it would be at least five years before the erosion reached the nearby community hall, and 10 to 15 years before inland property would be at risk. They recommended the council use that time ‘‘to start considering their options’’.
‘‘To intervene too soon could be an unnecessary expense for the community but to wait too long would be a poor decision for all,’’ the report said.
Coastal erosion has already affected the Westport community. A road near the airport was redirected as the sea inched closer to the runway, and significant flooding events are increasingly common.
Schwass said the storm flooded his mother’s home with water about a metre deep.
Niwa recommended the Buller District Council build an 800m long dune wall for protection against oversized waves.