Beneficial re-use brings rainbow to Hayling Island
Westminster Dredging’ s trailing suction hopper dredger Sospan Dau is currently back in operation at Hayling Island UK for Phase 2 of the five year beach nourishment programme.
Dredging commenced on 19 June 2009, with material won from the dredging of offshore sites, which are designated for the extraction of marine aggregates under licences held by Westminster Dredging, The material is then being ‘rainbowed’ onto the Hayling Island beach front along the Eastoke Peninsula.
By the end of the operation, expected to be in August, some 65,000m3 will have been discharged onto the beach.
Havant Borough Council said that the work needs to be done in order to provide flood protection to nearby houses caused by storm waves breaking onto the shingle beach. The Council has used GPS monitoring to build up a picture of coastal erosion and longshore drift at Hayling. By using this information they can build up an accurate picture of how the beach ‘behaves’ and work out the shape the beach needs to be in order to help prevent flooding.
Matt Hosey, Senior Coastal Engineer for the Havant & Portsmouth Coastal Group at Havant Borough Council said, ‘Using the material dredged from the seabed is the most economical way of replenishing the beach. Earlier phases have also seen the re-use of dredged material from Chichester harbour entrance. With a reduced cycle time for the vessel, this presented significant cost savings to the tax-payer, maintained navigable waters in the harbour entrance, and also kept the native material within the coastal cell.’
The work has an anticipated programme of 55 days, although this may be shorter if time is not lost due to bad weather. A summer campaign was chosen because there is less risk to the dredging work in terms of the weather calling a halt to operations. Sospan Dau will be discharging the material onto the beach each day at high water for a period of an hour and a half every 12 hours, which means minimal disturbance to residents and tourists. The dredging work is keeping to a very tight schedule and the bulk of the work should be completed by the summer holidays.
Indeed, rather than being an inconvenience to tourists, the Sospan Dau is proving to be a bit of a crowd puller when it discharges shingle onto the beach.
