Port Otago: Sand renourishment nears end at Te Rauone Beach

Port Otago’s Marine & Infrastructure team is about to complete the sand renourishment works at Te Rauone Beach in the next few days.

“Sand pumping began a couple of weeks ago and the process has run pretty much to plan. About 5000 cubic meters of sand has been moved and the beach looks summer ready,” Port Otago said.

The project involves:

• Sand and water being dredged from the channel edge (just beyond Te Rauone Beach, and part of the maintenance dredging schedule) by the trailing suction hopper dredger New Era. Hopper capacity = 850m3 (equivalent to 34 large truck and trailer units),

• The New Era then joins up with the backhoe dredge Takutai and a 1.5-tonne submersible pump is lowered into the New Era’s hopper. It takes about two hours to pump the sand-water slurry across to the beach,

• The pipe connects into a 400m length of pipe that sits along the harbor floor and carries the slurry to the beach,

• It takes about 1 minute for the slurry to travel from the dredges to the shore, where the South Roads team spread the sand to where it’s needed.

The Te Rauone Beach Coast Care Committee, Te Rūnaka o Ōtākou and Port Otago worked together for 10 years, with the goal of restoring and developing the beach amenity. Their goal was realised two-and-a-half years ago.

Projections suggested that sand renourishment would likely be needed every two to five years and after significant storms.

Prior to the current work, the beach had been renourished once, via sand recycling in June last year.