Posted on July 12, 2022
The strange sight of a boat off Port Beach looking like it had burst a pipe as it sprayed an arc of water into the ocean is actually part of the region’s sand erosion solution.
Thousands of cubic meters of sand is being dredged from Fremantle Port’s deep water channel and ‘rainbowed’ onto the beach over a two-week period.
Up to 30,000 cubic meters of sand and water will be shot through a hose onto the nearby shore area over 14 days, with an extra 120,000 cubic meters set to be recovered from the channel next year.
The rainbowing at Port Beach on Wednesday. Credit: City of Fremantle/supplied
Erosion is far from a new issue at Port Beach’ but the challenge has reached new heights in the past few years, with the continual degradation a concern for beach lovers but an even bigger headache for places like Coast restaurant, which is just metres from the waves.
The State Government in 2019 deemed Port Beach as the most worrying of all WA coastal erosion hotspots.
Fremantle Mayor Hannah Fitzhardinge said the sand nourishment program was a short-term buffer to protect the coast from erosion and bring back metres of the beach washed away each winter.
“[It] has been developed to provide a wide enough beach so that, with the anticipated movement of the placed sand, there will still be a sufficient buffer against the erosion caused by severe storms,” she said.
Some parts of the beach, including Sandtrax beach, are closed for safety reasons during the works, which take place each day at high tide.
