Dune and dusted: beach swallows home as authorities drag their feet
TWO years ago Gill and Konrad Brandstetter were told they needed permission to push back a giant sand dune threatening to overrun their holiday house.
This week permission was finally granted, but for the Brandstetters it is too late — their ceiling has caved in.
The notorious “Dune A” advancing on the holiday town of Oyster Bay has claimed its first victim and the Brandstetters are seeking legal advice.
“I don’t give up easily, but I am defeated by the lack of haste from all departments, national and provincial,” Gill said this week. The East London family now have a dune in their guest room, and are in a race against time to save the rest of their holiday house.
The official go-ahead to battle the Oyster Bay dunes is at least a welcome relief for other homeowners in the path of about 180 000m³ of wind-driven sand dune that has gate-crashed the holiday town near Port Elizabeth, creeping west to east across a historic dune belt.
Bulldozers and front-end loaders are due to rev into action next week for the first phase of a R6-million rehabilitation plan aimed at cutting the dunes down to size and stabilising them with vegetation.
A sea of shifting sand has also closed the town’s river mouth, which has houses on one side, raising fears of a repeat of floods five years ago that destroyed four homes.
“We just want to get things started now,” said Joe Meyer of the Oyster Bay Ratepayers Association, adding that residents had donated money to assist with dune rehabilitation.
Some residents are still fuming over what they consider an unnecessary delay that could have saved the Brandstetters’ GRAIN STORM: The roof of the Brandstetters’ home has collapsed under the weight of Oyster Bay’s ’Dune A’ house and prevented many nightmares for other residents along Brander Street — socalled because it used to have a view of the sea, before the dunes moved in.
Electricity and water meters, fencing and almost the entire sea-fronting road have gradually been swallowed by the wind-driven sand mountain.
Homeowner Keith Mutch this week slammed the local Kouga council and Eastern Cape officials for failing to act, even after initial approval was received last year from the provincial government. “Continuous questioning . . . has not produced an ounce of sand removal,” said Mutch.
Last-minute correspondence between residents and Kouga mayor Elza van Lingen reveal how an apparent bureaucratic stalemate cost the Brandstetters their house. In an e-mail to Van Lingen last month, the Brandstetters fumed: “As one permit is signed, which usually takes a year or two, the goalposts move and another permit is then required.”
In response, Van Lingen fired off an e-mail to a provincial official, urging intervention. But it was too little too late for the Brandstetters, who wrote back this week: “Well, time has run out. The roof has finally given up and the weight of the sand dune has won the battle. Our roof has collapsed and the dune is now inside our house.”
Kouga spokesman Mfundo Sobele confirmed authorisation for the rehabilitation plan but said authorities would not be allowed to alter the natural course of the dune.
“Infrastructure that has been lost to the sand encroachment — stated as forces of nature reclaiming that space — should not be claimed back,” Sobele said. “If there was a piece of road where the sand has built up to a dune, that space can no longer be utilised for the purposes of road infrastructure.”
But emergency work was permitted in the case where houses were threatened, other experts pointed out.
Meyer welcomed the government commitment to the dune rehabilitation plan, drawn up by experts. “I know it has been a difficult road, but the best part of climbing a mountain is being on the summit at sunset.”