April 2019 there is to be a barge just off shore loaded with sand dredged from further out to sea being pumped onto the beach and then spread by bulldozer. This will be the first time this coastal protection system, pioneered over recent years by our Dutch friends, will be applied in the UK on the scale proposed.
The beach is continually on the move down towards Yarmouth which causes cliff erosion and collapse. This was generally stopped abut 60 years by the installation of the wooden groynes and revetments, but the beach is still slowly sinking, which is exposing more defences which then get damaged and may eventually be left on top of the beach and destroyed. Sandscaping (as it’s called) is intended to stop that happening
The sandscaping will stretch from Walcott to to a few 100m short of the Holiday Village. So it will cover over half of Paston’s coastline. It’s maximum depth will be at the Bacton end of the Gas Terminal then reducing either way. The work is planned at the moment to take place April to July 2019, but there are a lot of licences and consents still to be obtained.
There will be nearly 2 m cubic metres of sand, the cost will be around £20m of which about 2/3rds is to be paid by the Gas Terminal operators and the remaining 1/3rd partly by central and local government.
The overall policy for our coast is one of “managed re-alignment”. However policy is to protect the gas terminal through which passes about a third (some people will tell you half and others a quarter) of Britain’s gas. The expected life of the terminal currently about four decades. This is extending as Shell have been finding further small gas fields out at sea from which they are bringing gas on shore. And according to National Grid for the first time for some years gas will be flowing from the UK to continental Europe, during the summer when (broadly speaking) our neighbours who have gas storage facilities can buy it more cheaply.
