Maintenance dredging over …..for now

March 2012

Despite the dubious need for those deeper channels, PoMC proudly announced the successful completion of maintenance dredging on March 8th

......with assurances that all had been completed in accordance with their Environmental Management Plan. PoMC reports that around 300,000 cubic metres of sand was removed from the South Channel and dumped off Mt. Martha. So, now we have an idea where Portsea beach sand might have ended up!

It’s interesting that two days later (March 10th) The Age advertised a $9.2 million tender to distribute 40,000 tonnes of sand over the fast eroding beaches of Aspendale and the Bellarine Peninsula. And- just two years back, in April 2010, The Age advertised a $8 million tender to “re-nourish” Melbourne’s Bay beaches with over 166,000 tonnes of sand, following the swifter than usual disappearance of sand from numerous Bay beaches. 

Over $17 million of re-nourishment works in just two years is unprecedented - a massively accelerated rate of renourishment since channel deepening enlarged the entrance to PPBay!

It’s no comfort that before sailing down here, the dredge Brisbane had in December 2011 just finished works in Gladstone harbour – where such controversy over toxic plumes of silt, fish kills and fishermen falling ill occurred.



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