Coastal erosion quickens
(Great Yarmouth Mercury, 15 April 2005)
The sea is set to swallow homes along the coast faster than ever as a result of climate change, the Environment Agency has warned. Already residents say quickening erosion has reached up to 30ft in six weeks at Scratby where homes are edging towards the sea and could be gone in five years. And the Environment Agency says the situation will get worse as storms from the north-east become more frequent and severe.
Pamela Campbell, 62, who has lived on the Promenade at Scratby for seven years estimated that over the last six, weeks the sea had nibbled into 30ft of dunes. She said: "The erosion has been noticeably worse over the last year-and-a-half. We on the Promenade have five years in these houses - if we are lucky. "We can't sell this house - no-one would buy it. I'm not even sure we could get insurance."
And next-door neighbour Barbara Sowinski, 65, said: "We hoped to leave this house to our grandchildren - now we are not sure if it will even last through the next decade."
They hope their bleak prospects will help a Save Our Shoreline message being sent to the authors of a draft shoreline management plan which campaigners say abandons communities and hides the heartache of what will be lost.
The residents of the Promenade blame the new Scroby Sands windfarm - which sits at an angle to Scratby - for affecting the pattern of erosion. But the Environment Agency and windfarm operators Powergen say this is unlikely.
Concern about accelerated erosion is not confined to Scratby.
Robert Atyeo, who has lived in Winterton for 10 years, told the Mercury: "In the past six years, 60 metres have eroded and if erosion continues at this rate the café¬ car park and toilets will be in the sea within eight years. "This is the highest level of the beach, and after that it is downhill to the village." He criticised the draft shoreline management plan (SMP) which recommends that if maintaining current sea defences is not cost-effective the sea could be allowed to take its course - so-called "managed retreat." If this happens, the sea would surge in at places like Winterton, Scratby and Sea Palling as well as flowing into the freshwater Broads.
Mr Atyeo said: "I see this plan as passing the problem to our great-grandchildren - who may be standing on the steps of Norwich Cathedral with their feet in water saying 'Why didn't my great-grandfather do something when he had the chance'." He urged the Government to stop dredging offshore until a full public consultation was completed.
Malcolm Kerby, co-ordinator for the Coastal Concern Action Group, said: "In this draft plan the Government say they are going to take no action at Scratby and Happisburgh for the next 100 years. It is absolutely shameful."
Jim Shrimplin, portfolio holder for the environment on Great Yarmouth Borough Council, "We are not just talking about the cost of losing bricks and mortar. "It is about losing habitat, tourism, agricultural land and businesses. Billions are spent every year on the defence budget for Britain - but hardly anything is spent on stopping the actual realm from crumbling away."
The sea shall not have them
Knife-edge coastal communities are preparing their battleground ready to fight a management plan that campaigners say will put their homes at risk. A packed public meeting at Ormesby St Margaret was told that a recommended policy of "no active intervention" to tackle erosion would transform the Broadland hubs of Potter Heigham and Stalham into scenic "on-seas." Meanwhile coastal communities would be blighted, homes lost and holiday infrastructure eroded.
Malcolm Kerby, of the Coastal Concern Action Group, said people needed to put the consultation time to good use and that if apathy was allowed to win they only had themselves to blame.
The standing-room-only meeting on Thursday was told that the proposed shoreline management plan (SMP) would leave Newport and Scratby "vulnerable" but predictions about the rate of loss were "pie in the sky."
Mr Kerby said: "In 1992 consultants Halcrow drew a 60-year line on the map for Happisburgh - the sea reached it two years ago. The predictions are pure speculation but what we can measure is what has happened and in Happisburgh the erosion has been five times faster than Halcrow predicted." He told the meeting that, according to the SMP, Newport and Scratby could lose up to 55 properties in the next 50 years and up to 150 by 2105 plus holiday development, infrastructure, and link roads under the "no active intervention" option.
However, he warned that at Happisburgh under a supposedly stronger "hold the line policy" being recommended for the California to Caister stretch, 26 properties had been lost and the church would probably be gone within 20 years. And he told villagers that the problems were being made worse by off-shore dredging which earned the Government ?1 million a day, some of which should be ploughed back in to defences. He also called on the Government to underwrite uninsurable properties to remove blight and sustain confident communities.
He said: "This is not a management plan, it's an action plan for what someone wants to do with our coast. Every one of you matters. For too long now this country has suffered from apathy. We have been letting people get away with blue murder. Write and tell them what it is going to mean to us emotionally and financially. "Your own apathy will lose you everything. If you do not get involved you only have yourselves to blame."
Ormesby borough councillor Charles Reynolds urged people to say no to "the lunacy of dredging."
Comments on the SMP should be sent to Terry Oakes Associates Ltd, PO Box 186, Lowestoft, NR33 OWY.