Sea Erodes Path By Seawall At Seawick – August 2013

Sea has eroded part of path running in front of seawall at Seawick

EA response was to put rocks in front of sea wall!  This is entire pointless as the sea can not reach these rocks yet.

By the time the sea can reach these rocks, after it has eroded the rest of the path, the rocks will simply fall into the sea.

The sad thing is the solution has been known for hundreds of years, build groynes.

Even worse the solution has been successfully used a few hundred yards to the north at  Seawick.

And a few yards further north at Jaywick

So the recipe is

1. Don’t pile rocks agains the sea wall
2. Use rocks to build groynes perpendicular to the sea wall
3. Ensure the groynes are higher than the sea at high tide
4. Don’t build the groynes too far apart

At Seawick groynes have been built correctly

and incorrectly

What’s been done wrong?

1. Instead of building a groyne perpendicular to the sea wall near the shop, a reef has been built off shore.
2. The reef is too low, it is covered by water at high tide – this means it won’t stop the sea moving sand.

Here you can see the weed all over the reef by Alan Underwood’s shop.

Here is a groyne where the lower part, the part sometimes covered by the sea, has sea weed growing on it.

In summary

The sea is eroding land at Seawick

EA and TDC are doing nothing

EA and TDC have already built rock groynes at Seawick which successfully defend the coast against the sea.

EA and TDC have built rock groynes at Seawick which DO NOT WORK, and done absolutely nothing to rectify the situation.

Could this be because EA plan to either knock down seawall at Seawick or let it fail?  environment-agency-plan-for-tendring-coastline-by-2105-may-2013