Narrabeen Lagoon: Dredging to cut flood risk for hundreds and homes and businesses
New images show the dramatic scale of dredging work designed to slash the flood risk for homes and businesses around Sydney’s largest lagoon. See the photos.
Manly
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Images have emerged showing the dramatic scale of work now underway to slash the risk of hundreds of homes and businesses being flooded around the edges of Sydney’s largest lagoon.
Contractors, with a fleet of diggers and excavators, have been hired by Northern Beaches Council to dredge 40,000 tonnes of sand from Narrabeen Lagoon so that its outlet to the ocean stays open for longer.
The Lagoon naturally opens and closes depending on the amount of sand at the entrance, tides, prevailing swell conditions and rainfall.
But it costs the council about $1 million, on average once every four year, for major work to reopen the lagoon to the sea at North Narrabeen Beach.
And it often has to do emergency work, using small diggers and bulldozers, to create a temporary channel to allow the lagoon to empty during periods of high rainfall and storm surges.
Now, for the past several weeks, as part of the council’s “Narrabeen Lagoon Entrance Management Strategy”, contractors have been removing up to 200 truckloads of sand and sediment each day — on each side of the Ocean St Bridge — in the run up to the December school holidays.
The sand is being dumped on Collaroy-Narrabeen Beach, between Goodwin and Stuart streets, to help improve the zone where the controversial new sea wall is being built.
Four long fingers of sand have been creased in the lagoon by the contractors so they can set up their dredging equipment that grabs the sand and sediment and dumps it into large mobile skips.
All up, the equivalent of the weight of 100 jumbo jets will be extracted.
Mayor Sue Heins said the works was based on flood risk management studies.
“Narrabeen Lagoon is one of our greatest natural waterways but as locals know all too well, it is prone to flooding,” Cr Heins said.
“Council has a strategy to manage the lagoon entrance to minimise the risk of flooding, backed by research and analysis by coastal experts.
“It includes more frequent sand clearance operations, as well as reshaping and revegetating sand dunes to assist with sand stabilisation.
“We appreciate that these works may be an inconvenience in the short term, but they are necessary to protect our community from flooding in the medium to long term.”
For more information about Council’s lagoon management strategy visit this link.
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