Oriental Bay Beach Development
Pace, progress and any possible changes
New Eastern beach
Repaved esplanade footpath
Enhanced main beach
Improved root conditions for Norfolk Island Pine trees
The majority of the project has run better than the WCC expected. The resource consent process is a huge hurdle with a project of this size especially in terms of finance and that it covers 800 metres of coastline in the middle of the capital city of New Zealand. The voluntary consultation sorted out what might have been real opposition. Dealing with such opposition later in the process would have been expensive, both in time and money, and would have created a delay to the project by a year or so. This may have also put the project at risk as opposition and delay makes politicians suspicious of whether they should continue with a project.
There have been definite financial constraints. The project could have had $20 million spent on it easily to make it better not bigger, but neither Wellington nor New Zealand has this amount of money. The few changes have been made to the project due to cost have been related to specific components within the project. For example, some of the issues were:
- An old drain, 100 years old and not on any plans, was found in the middle of Oriental Parade and it was necessary to find out if it was still serviceable.
- The concave shape of the bay could have ended up with dominant strong physical structures coming out of the bay making it quite a different shape. The easiest thing to do would have been to put a series of breakwaters around and then put the sand between them to keep the waves out. Instead sand containment structures and devices have been constructed. The submerged reef out from the new eastern beach is an example; a breakwater could have been built above water which would have been much simpler and would have sheltered the beach but the decision was made to build it below water so the reef is effectively a groin forming a curved edge achieving the same result and also keeping the natural beach appearance.
The reef's prime role is to absorb wave energy under storm conditions to minimise the loss of sand around the coastline. On occasions, sand will need to be moved back along the beach, as happens with other artificially supplemented beaches around New Zealand and the world. Likewise, Oriental Bay will require a regular 'top-up' of sand to replace any sand lost from the beach system out of reach from the shore. - The grain colour and size. There were a lot of issues around obtaining the right type and colour. People didn't want black sand nor grey sand. There is good quality clean sand available and 10% of the price but it wouldn't have been accepted.
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