Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
A review of beach renourishment practices in Australia was provided by Cooke
et al. (
2012
), who identified 130 beaches that were renourished between 2001 and
2010. When compared with beach renourishment projects elsewhere, most Australian
projects are small in scale (typically less than 50,000 m
3
) but frequent (typically at
intervals of less than a year). Sand is usually placed on the foreshore (i.e. between
the high and low tide lines), possibly because of the importance of many Australian
beaches for recreation. Mention has been made of Ettalong Beach in Broken Bay,
than 50,000 m
3
) are undertaken, the latest being in summer 2013 where sediment was
have included Lady Robinsons Beach close to Sydney Airport in Botany Bay, where
in 1997 the beach volume was increased by placing 150,000 m
3
of sand and eight
groynes, followed by 310,000 m
3
and five groynes in 2004-05 (AECOM
2010
).
Beach renourishment has been widely applied in Port Phillip Bay in south-east-
ern Australia, a marine embayment with a coastline 256 km long. Between 1975
and 1990 some 20 of its beaches, averaging 1 km in length, had been renourished
(Bird
1990
). By 2010 this number had risen to 30 (Bird
2011
), as shown in Fig.
7.1
.
The results of beach renourishment in Port Phillip Bay have been favour-
able, this being a generally good environment for such projects, and most of the
beaches have persisted for several years (Bird
1991
). A review of beach renour-
ishment projects in 2001 found that 'the majority of the beaches that have been
renourished are in nearly as good a condition as when they were first constructed.
Only a few need topping up with sand and only four needed to be rebuilt' (Vantree
2001
). Nevertheless, periodic renourishment has been necessary, for example, on
the north coast of Port Phillip Bay, where a sandy beach extends east from Station
Pier, Port Melbourne to St Kilda, in front of a sea wall along Beach Street and
Beaconsfield Parade. Mackenzie (
1939
) reported that sea walls and groynes had
been constructed from 1898 onwards to halt coastline recession. The beach had
been depleted during storms (large quantities of sand were swept from the beach
across Beaconsfield Parade during the November 1934 storm surge), and parts
have been artificially renourished, including a 900 m sector at Middle Park in
1976 and 2001. Subsequent storms, notably in February 2005, have depleted the
beach and necessitated supplementary renourishment (Bird
2011
).
Other notable locations of renourishment projects in Australia have included
numerous along the east coast, such as those on the beaches of Townsville, along the
Australia has a number of permanent by-passing projects, such as those at Noosa
(Nankervis
2005
) and Tweed Heads (Acworth and Lawson
2011
; Boswood et al.
2001
,
2005
). These projects use permanent structures to transfer sediment by hydraulic
