Environment Agency Plan For Tendring Coastline By 2105 – May 2013

Page 144 of Essex and South Suffolk SMP, shows Environment Agency’s plan for Tendring coastline by 2105, about half of it will have gone.

A curious plan for a body charged with maintaining sea defences.

Environment Agency Plan For Tendring Coastline By 2105

Different colours are drawn on different sections of the coast.  The table to the right of the map lists what they all mean.

Basically anything which is not green is not guaranteed to be defended.

The purple intrigues me – it represents

Hold the line/managed realignment

Managed realignment means knocking down the sea walls.

Hold the line means maintaining the sea walls.

It is entirely unclear to me how you can have both “Hold the line” and “Managed Realignment”

Either the plan is

We haven’t decided yet (not much of plan is it)

or

We don’t want to tell you yet

Tendring District Council has been announcing they have nearly secured £22million from EA to fund rebuilding the sea wall and groynes at Clacton and Holland-on-Sea.

This may well be true.

Yet I have a big problem accepting that EA will fund upgrading sea defences at Clacton and Holland, whilst paying for knocking them down immediately to north and south.

I can see the coastline stretching from Brightlingsea to Manningtree whilst Clacton/Holland and Frinton/Walton become (sinking) islands.

The yellow and blue drawn around the Naze and Quay lane in Kirby le Soken means it is now GOVERNMENT policy to either let these areas be flooded, or to actively knock down the sea wall to ensure they are.

And just in case anyone has forgotten this is all based on DEFRA projections which are in turned based on IPCC predictions of global warming.

And if global warming isn’t happening there is no basis for Environment Agency’s shoreline management plan other than wanton destruction.

It would be nice if local councillors and members of parliament were actively fighting this plan instead of just accepting it as a done deal.