Bringing back the beach to Durban’s Golden Mile
FIVE Durban beaches are finally getting a much-needed infusion of sand – but the emergency operation will cost ratepayers at least R15-million in extra costs because of lengthy failures by the municipality and Transnet to repair the city’s sand-pumping scheme.
Last week‚ a massive black plastic pipeline‚ reminiscent of a giant sea serpent‚ began to spew out a slurry of sea water onto the severely eroded remnants of North Beach.
Over the next three weeks‚ the temporary ship-to-shore pipeline will be shifted to four other beaches – Dairy‚ Suncoast‚ Country Club and Sunkist – to replenish the sand and also prevent Durban’s promenade washing into the Indian Ocean.
The massive operation follows severe erosion over recent years exacerbated by the equinox spring high tides in February.
City officials have sought to blame the erosion on climate change and the proliferation of illegal sand-mining operations in several KwaZulu-Natal rivers‚ but inquiries suggest that the immediate cause has been the 10-year delay by Transnet and the eThekwini Municipality to reinstate an extensive land-based sand-pumping network that was commissioned in the early 1980s.
Largely because the massive Durban harbour entrance piers prevent sand from moving up the coast to replenish naturally eroded beaches‚ the municipality has been pumping sand onto beaches for several decades.
This is acknowledged on the city’s website‚ which records that the first artificial sand replenishment scheme began in 1935.
However‚ early schemes did not solve the erosion problem and eventually a major 3.5km pumping scheme was designed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to ensure that dredged sand could be pumped from the harbour as far north as Minitown.
But when the harbour mouth was widened in 2007‚ a critical sand hopper facility had to be demolished – and 10 years later‚ Transnet has confirmed that a new hopper has not been commissioned yet.
The CSIR pumping scheme includes at least four booster pump stations to shift the sand northwards, but eThekwini has now confirmed that at least two of these booster stations are no longer working, making it impossible for sand to be pumped further than Addington beach.
Businessman and fisherman Johnny Vassilaros has criticised the city and Transnet for the lengthy delay in reinstating the sand-pumping scheme.
“Ever since they demolished the old sand-pumping hopper station in 2007‚ our coastal engineering department has been making one blunder after another‚ failing dismally in its primary function of replenishing the city’s beaches,” he said.