COAST EROSION.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 9

COAST EROSION.

PROTECTION BILL. t First Task For Parliament On Reassembly. UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF ? ) (British Official Wireless.) (Received 11.30 a.m.) RUGBY, September 20. s One of the first measures which will be introduced on the reassembling of Parliament is the Coast Protection Bill. The President of the Board of Trade, Mr. William Graham,, has this in hand. 3 The bill is founded on the report of the Royal Commission which examined 3 ' the question of coast erosion before the \ war. Its main purpose is to set up ad ' hoc bodies, representative of the local . authorities in whose territories encroachment by the sea is taking place. These new authorities will be enabled ' to concert schemes to prevent erosion over wide areas. The bill itself will L not make provision for any money to assist in the work, but it may be taken • as one part of thy Government's plans " for the relief of unemployment. A GRAVE MATTER. [ 1 SEA TAKES ALL, GIVES NOUGHT On the east coast of England the sea is doing all the taking and is giving . nothing, mainly because the subject of • coast erosion is "nobody's child. The i promised bill «will encounter a good deal [ of opposition unless it alters this state ■of affairs. Generally speaking, the sea s does its fell work slowly and unostenta- ;. tiously, but every now and then there is a sensational crash of cliff. Visitors tu East Coast seaside resorts • know of large sections of low cliff that [ will hardly survive another winter. : From Hunstanton, on the Wash, to • Lowestoft there are thousands of tons ; which might i slip into the North Sea at : almost any moment. The greatest loss suffered to the coast of England in i recent years occurred a year or so ago, I when the south-east coast of the Isle [ of Wight changed its outline. ; Erosion on the North Wales coast has [ been so uniform as to afford evidence of the theory of a local engineer that the bed of the- sea between the Great , Orme, a famous and beautiful headland ' at Llandudno, and the Wirral coast of Cheshire is steadily sinking. There is nothing sensational about erosion in these parts, but the sea is gaining ground. Detrition was going on at the rate, of about a foot a year from 1871 to 1898. In the next twelve years land was lost to, the sea at the rate of ten feet per annum. In the next four years the rate of los 3 increased to 30 feet per annum. In the past twelve years there has been further acceleration of the erosion, and the sea is now attacking the town of Rhyl on its eastern flank. The sand dunes at this point are being steadily sucked away, and they are the last natural defence of a wide area of land barely above high-water mark. The water is encroaching on the Rhyl golf course. It has already robbed it of one of its greens, and threatens others, as well as portions of fairway. With the wearing away of the sand in this locality the remains of a forest which grew there countless ages ago has been exposed to view. It is interesting to conjecture where the coast line was drawn in those prehistoric days,-when these buried forests • were the home of the huge beasts portions of whose remains are occasionally disinterred. Probably there was no Irish Sea ait that time, and, geographically at all events, there was .unity between Britain and Ireland. Changes such as those on the North Wales and the East Coasts are of course inconspicuous, save when studied over a period of years, but it is not much consolation to farmers and others to know that their property is only being filched from them foot by foot. In the aggregate big slices of land are involved. Within a lifetime 170 acres were lost at Dunwich, Suffolk, and 60 acres at Clacton. In 30 years 66 acres disappeared at Walton, on the Naze. Two hundred feet of cliff at Iferne Bay slipped away in 25 years. And close to the "Royal and Ancient," the headquarters of golf, the sea has pushed inland 30 feet in ten years. A message from London last week stated that a portion. of a cliff, estimated at 40,000 tons, fell without warning, into the sea on the Norfolk coast.