Cudgen Creek to be dredged - again!

The local MP for the NSW Tweed state electorate is reported as supporting further dredging of Cudgen Creek. By 'supporting', I mean he has convinced his LNP colleagues to spend taxpayers money in response to the urging of a few of his National Party supporters. Below is my response to the report of his daft proposal.

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Of some pertinence to Einstein’s aphorism is the news that Council, with the support of local MP Geoff Provest, intends to dredge the Cudgen Creek estuary again [Tweed Daily News, Dredging to go ahead at Cudgen Creek, 25 Aug 2016].

The report states taxpayer’s funds of $345,000 will be expended to remove 25,000m3 of sand from the lower estuary of the creek and place most of it as renourishment sand on the eroded section of Kingscliff Beach immediately north of the northern training wall. That’s a unit rate of $13.80/m3 which will hardly cover the cost of mobilising the dredge to the area, let alone actually dredging the sand. Not to put too fine a point on it, that cost estimate will escalate significantly.

Geoff Provest is quoting ‘navigation safety and access for recreational vessels at low tide’ as justification for the expenditure on the project. I note that Mr Provest didn’t seem to care too much about ‘navigation safety and access for recreational vessels at low tide’ when he cravenly acquiesced in the NSW Government’s successful efforts to close down the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard station at the entrance to the creek, which actually did do a lot to promote navigation safety for recreational vessels transiting the creek entrance, at all stages of the tide. Since the closure of the AVCG station a few years ago, I suspect that that there are now significantly fewer recreational vessels transiting the entrance, and it would be interesting to know just how much is being spent per vessel to improve ‘access at low tide’, which is, after all, for only a few hours per day.

However, referring back to my opening remark attributed to the great physicist, my main concern is that the estuary has been dredged many times before, the last about three years ago, with the sand placed as nourishment on the southern end of Kingscliff Beach. The improvement in access at low tide lasted for all of twelve months, and notwithstanding the local beach nourishment, the result of the dredging was a serious erosion pulse moving north along Kingscliff beach from the entrance, a pulse which is still evident in the centre of the embayment at Dreamtime Beach. This, as any competent coastal zone manager, coastal engineer or student of coastal zone dynamics knows, is because estuaries such as Cudgen Creek are not net exporters of sediment to the coastal system, but net importers.

Presently, sand moving north along the coast as a result of longshore drift bypasses Cudgen Creek over the shallow arcuate sand bar offshore from the entrance. As before, dredging the lower estuary will result in this longshore sand transport being intercepted and transported into the estuary by the flood tide to fill the dredge holes, a process which will continue until the estuary mouth is again shoaled and in dynamic equilibrium with tide and longshore transport rates. The interruption to the longshore sand transport as sand moves back into the estuary will again also result in an erosion pulse moving north along the beach from the estuary mouth.

I suspect that this proposed project comes under the heading of ‘something must be done, here’s something, so let’s do it’, since politicians like to point to their expenditure of public money as sole evidence of their value to society, rather than a more reasonable metric of value measurement, such as successful and useful outcomes based on value for money. But, whatever the motivations, this project is, without doubt, pandering to a few noisy souls, and a waste of my and your money.

And this is his response:

Thanks for your observations - I’m certainly no expert and acknowledge there are opposing views on the efficacy of dredging creek entrances. The same is also true of stabilising river and creek mouths with rock walls.

However, it has been some years since any dredging work was undertaken in Cudgen Creek and this announcement has been welcomed by boaties and other creek users.

And this is my response to his fatuous and, these days, all to prevalent prevarications from politicians:

Opposing views – please? Have a look at what has happened since the last dredging, and then tell me again about ‘opposing views’. At what point in this post-truth era did you decide to ignore the evidence of your eyes?

Please advise how many and which ‘boaties and other creek users’ have welcomed this proposal. The fishing club now back in the old AVCG training rooms?