State Commission Assessment Panel questions Semaphore South to West Beach Sand Pumping System Project

It’s the government's plan to save West Beach from erosion for good. But now it’s not just locals asking if they’ve really thought their $38.9m scheme through.

The state’s planning body and opponents have raised concerns about a contentious $38.9 million sand pipeline to replenish West Beach after the design changed just days before a crucial meeting on whether to approve the project.

The state government has vowed to build a 10km pipeline to transport sand from Semaphore to West Beach, removing sand carting trucks from beaches and delivering a permanent solution to coastal erosion at West Beach.

But the State Commission Assessment Panel on Tuesday delayed a decision on whether to give the project the go-ahead after Environment Minister David Speirs announced 72 hours earlier a pumping station at Grange would be removed from the project.

Instead his department, responding to public backlash, will investigate extending the pipeline to Largs Bay at an unknown cost.

Peter McGregor, Kay Ronai, Sandra Dann, Warwick Norman, Maggie Gordon at Semaphore Beach. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

SCAP member Paul Leadbeter took aim at the pipeline project’s director James Guy, asking at the hearing why the Grange pumping station had suddenly been removed from the proposal.

“I find that interesting given you sent an email on the 21st of January this year saying that both collection operations are critical to the successful operation of the sand pumping system. Now that presumably is not the case,” he said.

Mr Leadbeter, sharing concerns of panel member Emma Herriman, also asked why there had not been a “complete assessment of the social, environmental (and) economic implications of dealing with the sand loss”.

Mr Guy said there was no legislative need to undertake a formal environmental impact study but that the environmental, economic and social implications had been assessed.

He urged SCAP to approve the pipeline even though the source of sand was unresolved. He said beaches would be lost if nothing was done.

Coast Protection Board senior coastal planner Peter Allen told the panel there would be “rapid erosion of the sand, at least for the southern sections of the coastline”, if the project was not approved.

“It’s amazing how quickly beach levels can change, especially in that part of the world, if we don’t keep putting sand on it,” he said. “It’s something that’s not widely appreciated, I don’t think.”

Other issues raised at the SCAP hearing were coastal erosion from climate change, poor consultation creating “community angst”, microplastics from the pipe, the path of the underground pipeline and alternative designs.

Peter McGregor, Kay Ronai, Sandra Dann, Warwick Norman, Maggie Gordon at Semaphore Beach. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Forty-four residents also spoke to the panel raising concerns including impacts on northern beaches, destruction of dunes in laying underground pipe, noise of sand collection units, visual impact of pumping stations, poor community consultation and political favouritism because Grange residents are in a Liberal seat and Semaphore and Largs are Labor-held

They also pleaded with the panel to reject the application given the design change.

Kay Ronai of the Save Our Shores: Semaphore Largs Bay groups said the community was pitched in a “David and Goliath battle”.

“We are incredibly disadvantaged as it is, and this last minute, politically driven switch makes it all that much harder,” she said of the government’s decision to change the design.

“We expect more respect and genuine consultation.”

SCAP voted to write to the state environment department “seeking further clarification” before making a secret recommendation to Mr Speirs.

A spokesman for Mr Speirs said it would be “inappropriate for the Minister to comment on the SCAP process while it’s ongoing”.

Mr Speirs said the government was “getting on with delivering a project which will benefit the entire metropolitan coastline”.