{"id":674,"date":"2011-08-01T17:20:19","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T20:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/?p=674"},"modified":"2011-08-07T16:53:04","modified_gmt":"2011-08-07T19:53:04","slug":"battle-against-beach-erosion-often-futile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/?p=674","title":{"rendered":"Battle against beach erosion often futile"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article was in the Nova Scotian on Sunday, July 31, 2011. \u00a0It points out some of the pressing issues needing to be addressed in our coastal strategy.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Gail Lethbridge<\/strong><\/p>\n

Heads were shaking at the annual Beach Day party in my cottage community on the Northumberland Strait. In among the kids\u2019 games, the hotdog barbecue and the lineup for palm readings with “Shaba of the Dunes,” the talk was of weird storms, rising water levels and messed-up beaches.<\/p>\n

This talk wasn\u2019t coming from environmental activists or climate scientists who attend important conferences on global warming. It was from people who\u2019ve summered on this beach their whole lives, some of whose families have been here for generations. The weather talk wasn\u2019t surprising when you consider the storm that hit in the days leading up to Beach Day. For three days, a ferocious nor\u2019easter pounded this part of the Northumberland Strait, churning up three-metre waves that beached a couple of speedboats and ripped a raft from its moorings.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had summer storms before that were doozies but this one had people particularly rattled because of its unusual timing and length. According to the talk, we hadn\u2019t seen a July nor\u2019easter like this in many years \u2014 50, maybe 75. This storm hit six months after another vicious storm tore across the Northumberland Strait in late December, ripping apart beaches and dunes from Antigonish County all the way up the coast of New Brunswick. Our little beach was forever changed that day. That storm macerated dunes that hold the sand in place and took out chunks of the road that passes by one end. Its violence is still evident in the exposed roots of trees and dune growth ripped asunder. The storm made a mockery of the wind fencing that the beach\u2019s dune preservation committee put in place several years ago. There\u2019s not so much as a stick left.<\/p>\n

The response to these weird storms and beach damage has been boulders. Some cottagers have constructed walls of rock to armour their properties against further coastal erosion. Others are awaiting approval to do the same. In the short term, this seems to work. Properties that have been armoured do not seem to have lost land in the recent storms. Insurance companies and contractors favour bouldering as a protection strategy, but red flags are being raised and some say armouring does more harm than good. Marine ecologists point out that armouring may have unintended consequences. A beach, they say, is a dynamic community with complex processes that don\u2019t necessarily conform to human plans, however well-intended.<\/p>\n

In order to be sustainable, a beach requires a source of sediment to replenish sand. Protective walls choke off this supply. Another problem is that walls tend to conduct the energy of waves laterally down the wall front. Waves will crash with pent-up energy on coastline that has not been armoured, causing even greater coastal damage.This means that one neighbour\u2019s erosion solution becomes another neighbour\u2019s erosion problem.\u00a0It\u2019s not hard to see the potential for conflict in a beach community, both ecologically and socially.<\/p>\n

In some places along the East Coast of the United States, artificial coastal fortification has been banned or heavily regulated because of erosion damage caused to coastlines.\u00a0Some Texas wetlands have disappeared altogether where protective walls were built. Many coastal communities in the U.S. are constructing “living shorelines” to protect against erosion. Where possible, coastland is smoothed out to a gentle slope, and trees, natural shrubbery and grasses are planted. The idea is that the roots and growth secure the coastline against erosion.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to know where things will go on our beach. With weather patterns changing, there will no doubt be more of these weird storms. I\u2019m hoping they don\u2019t end up ripping apart a beach and a beach community.<\/p>\n

For more on coastal erosion and protection on the Northumberland Strait, read this report by Jennifer Graham of the Ecology Action Centre: www.ecologyaction.ca\/files\/images\/file\/May24_Nothumberland.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following article was in the Nova Scotian on Sunday, July 31, 2011. \u00a0It points out some of the pressing issues needing to be addressed in our coastal strategy. By Gail Lethbridge Heads were shaking at the annual Beach Day … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coastal-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":695,"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}