Badly eroded West Beach gets a superficial facelift

Locals at West Beach were horrified to see bulldozers in action on the badly eroded dunes just days after Environment Minister David Speirs called a halt to sand mining in the area.

Sand carting continues at West Beach in February 2019. Picture: Supplied

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Locals at West Beach were horrified to see bulldozers in action on the badly eroded dunes just days after Environment Minister David Speirs called a halt to sand mining in the area.

Former chair of the West Beach Residents’ Association Rosemary Cardinali, who has lived close to the beach for the past 15 years, could not believe her eyes last week when she saw sand-moving machinery back in action so soon after the moratorium.

She said workers at the site told her they were “extracting underlying rocks and clearing walkways to the beach”.

However, it then emerged that the latest flurry of activity was to tidy up the beach for the annual Pink and Blue Swim on Saturday to raise funds for cancer research.

A State Government spokesman said the Department of Environment and Water was not involved in sand management activity last week but that landscaping was done by other workers.

“In the first week of March, sand is being carted to West Beach and Henley Beach South from the Semaphore South breakwater for minor replenishment works to address erosion and sand drift on the beach,” the spokesman said.

Local resident and sand mining critic John Dundon said he was outraged.

“What they’re doing is cosmetic surgery by furiously pushing the sand around so it looks good for the politicians in attendance at the Pink and Blue swim and to improve access to the beach,” he said.

He said it was important the beach did not lose the popular swimming event.

He said he also had personal concerns about the future of the state masters open water swimming championships at West Beach and feared the West Beach Surf Lifesaving Club might lose carnivals because so little beach was left after all the erosion.

Ms Cardinali said it was frustrating to see signs posted on the dunes warning the public not to walk on them.

“But next you see the authorities pulling down the signs and mining those very same dunes with massive diggers. So you cannot walk on the dunes but front end loaders can cart away more than a million cubic metres of protected dunes. The irony of it is so sickening and depressing.

“We get angry because we’ve lived with false promises to fix the beach for years and years,” she said.