Beach Feedback May 2010 - St Francis Bay Residents Association

The Residents Association has no objection in publishing your letter on our website. It is unfortunate that there needs to be any seemingly unnecessary conflict given the fact that residents are in general more than happy with the progress being made using the PEM system. Please note the following circumstances that led to your correspondence:

It was Mr. Alan Tonkin that started circulating letters to not only members of the public but also to the Kouga Municipality in order to discredit the PEM system.

It was Mr. Tonkin who tried to discredit the results of the PEM system based on two surveys done twenty months apart and that only covered approximately 30% of the area surveyed by SIC. It is also interesting to note that his first survey was done some eight months prior to SIC installing their system. I assume that you discovered this flaw when according to you “analysed the RTK data provided by Mr Tonkin, and visited SFB last May during the 6th reef conference at J-Bay, and have not seen evidence of beach recovery”. I also assume that you discussed your analysis with Mr. Tonkin during your visit. This is possibly why Mr. Tonkin felt that he was justified in circulating his erroneous report.

Shaw I would like to point out the following to you:
It was not the Ratepayers Association who selected and are paying for the PEM system, it was and is the Kouga Municipality. After a lengthy conference call to Denmark, the Municipality selected the PEM system based on the fact the PEM system’s cost was approximately one tenth that of SRK’s Reef System.

The Municipality favoured the PEM system because of the fact that it required no ongoing costly re-nourishment.
The PEM system also had the advantage that it had less of an environmental impact on our beach and surrounding area.
The PEM system eliminated the need for costly road repairs as no trucks would be required to deliver sand to the beach.

At that stage ASR had made it clear that they were not prepared to guarantee even a fifty percent sand retention on the beach. This made it impossible for the KM to budget accurately.

At that point in time it was very clear that a large portion of the community were not prepared to pay levies that were needed to finance the expensive Reef system. The KM would have found it impossible to compel residents to pay these levies as this would have resulted in litigation.

Shaw I would like to make it clear that the St Francis Bay Ratepayers Association has no problems with ASR and its operations. The solution offered by ASR was unfortunately not acceptable to the Kouga Municipality at the time and held significant unpopular cost implications to residents. As a Residents Association we are very involved in monitoring the sand recovery on our beach. The beach Steering Committee is to date more than satisfied with the results and the efforts of the supplier of the PEM system.

From: Shaw Mead [mailto:s.mead@asrltd.co.nz]
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 3:59 AM
To: contact@sfbresidents.org; lesbrent@telkomsa.net
Cc: Nick Behunin; Brian Keare

Subject: RE: Update from the SFB Residents Association

Your letter on the St Francis Bay Website, dated 8 December 2009, has been brought to my attention.

Please consider this e-mail notice to you and the SFB Residents Association to remove incorrect, unfactual and possibly defamatory statements (we have not yet sought a legal opinion) regarding ASR and ASR-related projects from this website. In future, please undertake due diligence in your research before posting letters online.

On every account where you have cited ASR or ASR-related projects, your facts are incorrect, as addressed below:

“Narrowneck was not an ASR project. They submitted a tender which was rejected.”

This is incorrect. Narrowneck Reef design was undertaken by the founders of ASR through a University of Waikato contract. ASR was founded by Dr’s Black, Mead and Hutt in 1997. The extensive field work (little data was available for the area) and numerical modelling for design and impact of the Narrowneck Reef project was undertaken by Black, Mead and Hutt in 1997-98 through a UniLink contract at the University of Waikato. There are 3 volumes of technical reports 1. Field work, 2. Surfing amenity, and 3. Sediment transport, authored by Black, Mead and Hutt. This information is available in the Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 29, as well as a range of other peer-reviewed and publically availalbe documents.

“Narrowneck was built by Mc Quade Marine, and designed by Griffith University. Not by ASR!”

Narrowneck reef was built by Mc Quade Marine (ASR only recently began reef construction in 2008), however, Griffith University had no part whatsoever in design. The project was founded on a cost:benefit analysis of the value of a sandy beach by Raybould and Mules at Griffith University, while WRL in Syndey undertook the physical modelling of ASR’s numerical model design (no design changes were recommended by WRL). This information is also available in the Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 29, as well as a range of other peer-reviewed and publically availalbe documents..

“Narrowneck has not been altogether successful even as a surfing reef. Some of the 410 bidum bags have burst, and been replaced at considerable cost.”

This is incorrect and misconstrued information. 20 of the >400 geocontainers used to build the reef were fabricated of a test product with a hard outer-covering. This covering stiffened in seawater and led to the splitting of some of the test containers. These were replaced via warrantee by the manufacturers at no cost to the client (GCCC). Narrowneck Reef has been extremely successful, with an estimated increase in renourishment intervals to 30 years (previously 10 years). This information is all available online, and has been publised in several Australiasian Coasts and Ports conference papers by ICM, and was also presented at the 7th multi-purpose reef conference in Sydney on Friday 19 March. The beach response is seen over some 2 km alongshore and a widening of 50-100 m in the lee of the reef. Surfing ride length averages 40 sec, while surfing rides of up to 78 sec have been recorded (via GPS carried by surfers).

“Narrowneck relies on ongoing beach nourishment to replenish erosion on the beach behind the reef, 1,100,000 m³ sand had to be imported to the beach in the first years. This remains an ongoing requirement at huge additional cost. Similarly the ASR reef scheme in SFB required R3 million nourishment per year, every year!”

All of this information is misconstrued, as well as completely unrelated to the physical situation at SFB. A very short search on the net would show that the GCCC Beach Protection Strategy was aimed at a large stretch of coast and included removal of sand from the Seaway (this does have similarity with SFB, i.e. the choking of the Kromme Estuary), the multipurpose reef to protect the area known as Narrowneck and planting of sand-binding species on the foredunes. A brief summary of the Narrowneck project and the beach response to from 10 years of monitoring – all publically available information.

“The ASR reefs, as Joe states in his web page article, are not proven, not anywhere in the world!”

Apart from the multi-purpose reefs such as Narrowneck that are and have proven themselves around the world (there is published information and monitoring information available for several of these projects), submerged breakwaters and berms have been used as a coastal protection measures worldwide for more than a century. The only difference with modern multi-purpose reefs is using state of the art tools to design them and assess the impacts (rather than a ‘Thumb-suck’ as you say in SA), up to date knowledge of coastal processess (rather than a Thumb-suck), and incorporation of multiple use. The technology is not new or experimental, your statements are misleading and false.

While it seems that you have a personal vendetta to address, given the temper of your letter and various others that have recently been forwarded to me, in future refrain from including incorrect, unfactual and likley defamatory statements regarding ASR and projects that we have been involved with.

I have refrained from commenting on the PEM system, rather letting monitoring and time show the effecacy. Even so, I feel given your willingness to discredit multi-purpose reef technology and ASR, I feel it is appropriate to provide you with my professional opinion on the PEM system

I have looked into the PEM system in detail, and discussed it with many colleges, both here and internationally, including Dr. Ian Turner at WRL, who has been involved in examining this technology since the mid-1990’s and hosted a workshop on the subject at the 2007 Australiasian Coasts and Ports conference (I strongly suggest you contact him for an independent opinion on this technology). None of the coastal professionals that I have discussed this system with believe that it will work and none have ever viewed any data or peer-reviewed information that demonstrate that it works - nor through my own searches, have I found any peer-reviewed publications of the results of the application of this system – I would very much like to see such information if you could provide it? Seasonal photographs of beaches showing winter versus summer profiles do not suffice.

I have analysed the RTK data provided by Mr Tonkin, and visited SFB last May during the 6th reef conference at J-Bay, and have not seen evidence of beach recovery. It is notable that the volumes currently being quoted are within the ranges of monthly variation (from the monthly data collected previously using RTK surveys). It is also notable that the survey data from the SFB PEM trial is not publically available. If the PEM system is working effectively, there is no need to continue a dispute with people such as Mr. Tonkin, nor attempt to discredit our company’s very good international reputation.

Even so, as I have previously said, I sincerely hope that all of us coastal professionals have got it wrong and that SFB recovers to its former glory using the PEM system. Indeed, the system is very cost effective (if it works), and if there can be some unequiviocal evidence of the PEM system working as a coastal protection device, there are billions of dollars to be saved worldwide in beach restoration projects. I will be among the first to recommend it, since finding cost effective and sustainable solutions to beach restoration is something that is always the goal of a project.

I give my consent to have this ‘letter’ published on the SFB Residents Association website, which I will also forward to Mr. Tonkin for his dissemination.