Kouga Municipality has arranged to make monthly pro-rata payments to SIC Denmark for the lease of its PEM system for St Francis Bay’s beach until the end of the 5-year contract.
- Fishermen on the beach recently. Photo: Neil Brent
According to Neil Brent, local caretaker of the Danish system, the PEM system was on track even while payments were in arrears.
“The PEM system is contracted and designed to prevent any further erosion from the November 2008 measured beach datum,” Brent says adding that, according to the Danes’ consultants, the January 2012 survey showed sand volumes were up.
“PEM works by trapping sand carried in suspension in the waves as they wash onto the beach. In this way it builds a buffer of trapped sand in good conditions, which erodes in storm weather, leaving the base datum intact. Unfortunately the system cannot make sand to rebuild the beach entirely.”
At the St Francis Bay’s Residents’ Association AGM in December the organisation resolved to demand the municipality honours its contractual obligations to SIC . “In terms of its contract with the municipality, the SIC Mandate is to stabilise erosion of the target area and the rehabilitation (“rehabilitation” not defined) of the target area for five years at R1.2 million pa, escalating at 7.5% – following which, ownership and risk pass to the municipality,” Hilton Thorpe for the association said.
St Francis Chronicle 