Sand again - connecting the dots

Funny old thing, sand. This old gull started blogging about it in the very first post, and thanks to a flight way up the beach, feels impelled to rattle on some more, on that very same topic.

As young Gullz know, the Waimak River pumps somewhere between 50 and 100,000 cubic metres of sand out into Pegasus Bay each year. This is around the figure Ecanz works to (that's if it actually ever did anything about it, but, like old folks do, why, I'm rambling already). That sand's gotta go somewhere - right?

So there are three basic choices for yer Typical Grain of Sand:
- North
- Out to sea, straight ahead (East)
- South

Yours Truly has argued, convincingly, (well, shure convinced me, anyways) that the majority actually goes South, and ends up doing four things:

- making sandhills even higher
- making the seabed shallower all along the coast
- making the entire beach wider
- scooting round the end of the Brighton Southshore Spit and filling in the Estuary

Obviously, what happens week to week depends on storms, what state the sandhills are in, what various agencies have messed around with in terms of holes on the beach or new planting which traps sand, yada,yada,yada.

But the big picture is plain. More land ahoy!

And now, this old gull, having enjoying a leisurely glide all the way to Brooklands Lagoon and back, has picked up a snippet from a resident of that fair burg. (And what a burg it is! Your faithful scribe had thought of Brooklands as vaguely shack-infested, but blow me down, it's suburbia!)

Oh yes. That snippet.

Seems that the sand used to be dredged out of the Lagoon (which, for all of you non-flying types out there, can be Google Earthed) but that has long since ceased (Ecanz theory tending to the Keep It Natural in this case). And the Lagoon is rapidly silting (or sanding?) up. Quell Surpise, as our French cuzzies say. Causing washes at king tide, uncomfortably close to the front doors of some of the aforesaid non-shacks. According to our Intrepid Ninformant.

So, connecting the Dotz, us wise old gullz can see that:

- the Brooklands Lagoon is filling up at the Waimak Mouth
- the dunes are getting higher where they are constrained
- the Estuary (Heathcote-Avon) is filling up
- the seabed adjacent to the coast and off Sumner is filling up.

Hmmmm. A pattern, wethinks?

A good question to ask Ecanz:

What Are you going to do about all that sand?

Hint: how's about Dredging some of it again? After all, there's a bit of Coastal Property may need some Highering sometime this century, if all the eco-chondraics are right.