The Entrance Boat Shed calls for urgent dredging as sandbar rises
A HUGE sandbar has made the water so shallow beneath the century old Entrance Boat Shed, their hire boats are regularly stuck. The owners have called for more dredging.
Central Coast
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ICONIC tourism facility The Entrance Boat Shed is swiftly becoming high and dry.
The popular business, which has been at The Entrance for nearly 100 years, is facing tough times as the build-up of sand has their fleet in just 30cm of water.
The boat keels are scraping the sand, and the new owners said business is suffering as a result of the build-up through The Entrance channel and is calling for urgent dredging in Tuggerah Lake.
“Something has got to happen. Three quarters of our hire fleet is getting stuck in the sand,” co-owner Mark Cummings said. “We have to wait until high tide to launch the boats.”
Mr Cummings, Lane Whitfield, and Terry and Toni Moon, took over the lease of the Boat Shed in December 2017, and “have continued to be engulfed by sand”.
“It’s not just us. It’s the whole community,” Mr Cummings said. “The rotten weed is coming from the sand. The Entrance brings in the tourists, but if the channel closes up everyone is gone.”
He said they were concerned about the health of the lake, along with major flooding impacts for the community.
“The lake only gets three hours of a six hour tide because of the sandbar,” he said. Water flushing in the lake is less than half.”
Mr Moon said it had affected business, with staff taking longer to help customers out to the deep water to use the hire equipment.
“It’s getting worse by the day,” he said. “We can only get the boats out in high tide and we have to walk the kayaks out to the deep water to help people in. Since we have moved here, we’ve seen the sand engulfing us by at least two metres,” he said. “It’s just really hard. We will survive but it’s going to be hard.”
He said the business had to hold off maintenance and upgrade works due to the ongoing issues.
Central Coast Councillor Greg Best said the issue is about Central Coast Council and all levels of government working together.
“We need to solve the problems. Businesses are suffering and there are safety issues,” he said.
“It’s a disaster. We need an ocean dredge. We could renourish beaches in desperate need of sand replenishment. Anything else is just a bandaid fix.”
He said he will bring the issue to the next council meeting and call for an urgent report into Brisbane Water and The Entrance channel.
A council spokeswoman said council recently welcomed $225,000 in funding as part of the NSW Government’s Rescuing Our Waterways program, and will commence dredging in The Entrance, east of the bridge, in March.
“Council bases the extent and location of that dredging on ongoing monitoring of the channel by fixed camera and surveys of the sand in area,” she said.
“Council will determine the final dredging pattern later this month, once the latest survey results are received and analysed.”
The spokeswoman said dredging of The Entrance has historically been undertaken on average every two years.