Act now to avert loss of life in St Francis

Our council will have to move fast to stop another disaster which could claim a life this time.

We were fortunate that this calamity happened during the day and that no life was lost. Imagine the disorientation and terror if it had happened at night?

Looking at the issues in front of me I am staggered by the complexity of it all. We have life itself at stake. We have a natural “soft landscape”, as Prof Ellery puts it, an unusually high rain fall this year, aging and inadequate infrastructure and a council without funds.

We now know that this “Oyster Bay headland-bypass dunefield” system, as Prof Ellery has termed it, is prone to sand, water and debris flow. Leighton Hulett, bless his soul, had no inkling about this when he started developing St Francis Bay.

…but nature moves at her own pace and now, 50 years or a blink of an eye later, we have a couple of these phenomena happening, affecting our lives drastically.

Lets face it, we are partly to blame for the results we have here.

We have neatly boxed in this dune-field above St Francis Dr with St Francis Dr and Santareme being the main culprits.

That intersection … corner of Diaz and St Francis Drives is the path of least resistance. My prediction, based on the topography and location of these pools is that the next flow will happen at the exact same place with much greater consequences if we don’t act NOW!

I have driven through bumper high pools to have a look at the issue (lost my number plate in the process!). A friend of mine did the same about a month ago. Yesterday he told me that it was too deep for his 4×4 vehicle this time he went to have a look.

He observed a lot of these smaller pools draining into the larger pool.

Adding to these pools is the Municipal Water works, next to the tips. It has a pipe that is pumping water onto the landscape 24/7!

So, it is clear, this pool is getting bigger and something HAS to be done. Just last night we had a heavy downpour, adding to this problem.

What do we do?

Prof Ellery’s take is that we must be CAREFUL!!! Do not mess with this, he says. There is no question about a controlled breaching as we know we cannot control it.

He has suggested that we fortify the dunes to contain the pools and wait for the water table to subside. I don’t know if he was aware of the fact that this pool is getting bigger and bigger as all the other pools are draining into this natural basin hugging the dune on the perimeter of the Air-park.

Council has announced that they intend siphoning off the water. I think this is a wise move. Something HAS to be done. Trying to contain it could amplify the eventual disaster.

We have to be very careful about how this siphoning is done and the pool must not be disturbed.
Based on calculations done by Prof Ellery, the pool is a kilometer long and 400m wide. I conservatively estimated that the pool is 1m deep….that is almost half a milion cubic meter of water! We have to treat it with caution and not have a repeat of the Sand River Bridge washing away. This time lives could be lost.

Have a look at this. The “your comment” portion is what Prof Ellery wrote following years of studying the landscape. The “response” is from Dr Illenberger, who lives in New Zealand and has only been on site once, for a couple of hours.

- St Francis Connect