Posted on June 19, 2017
By Nicholas McElroy, Gold Coast Bulletin
THE Gold Coast’s biggest offshore dredging program has kicked off with a 111m long barge dredging tonnes of sand and pumping it toward beaches today.
The $13.9 million Beach Nourishing Project aims to increase the amount of sand on open beaches which are vulnerable to erosion caused by powerful cyclones and wild surf.
For the next 16 weeks crew on the Balder R hopper dredger owned by Danish company Rohde Nielsen will work all hours dredging tonnes of sand from deepwater to the surf zone.
The boat will work from The Spit south to Palm Beach.
Mayor Tom Tate said the project was driven by council engineers who had studied data from wave buoys, beach surveys, camera monitoring and computer modelling before calling in the barge.
“This project involves dredging three million cubic metres of sand from deep water offshore sand supply areas and relocating it around the wave-break zone,” Cr Tate said.
He said the barge would either dump sand from the bottom of its hull or by “rainbowing” the sand from the vessel’s hull.
The project is part of council’s Ocean Beaches Strategy.
Council engineers said the sand replenished in the next 16 weeks would benefit the Gold Coast for at least the next 15 years.
Source: Gold Coast Bulletin
