Michael Smither, artist who wants to rebuild beaches

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 18

Michael Smither, artist who wants to rebuild beaches

By

STAN DARLING

Michael Smither, a well-known Niew Zealand artist, is sought after these days for another talent. He builds, or rebuilds, beaches.

He does it the natural way, with strategically-placed driftwood and native plants that will help repair storm damage. Several years ago, he started with a beach in New Plymouth he had known as a boy. He was asked to have a look at Fitzroy Beach by a city councillor there.

He was saddened by what he did not see. The dunes of his youth had been worn away, the beach had almost disappeared. It was down to flat sand. Only some dune remnants still existed at one end of the beach. “I have been an artist all my life, and have spent a lot of time on beaches,” says Mr Smither. “Part of being an artist is observing things and understanding what you’ve observed." He understood that the depleted beach needed to capture and hold sand again. He rejected the usual engineering methods of groynes and walls. With a wall, sand can be scoured out in front of the wave barrier, making the sea deeper there. When a storm hits, big waves can crash over the wall and destroy buildings. Groynes can disrupt normal beach-building . channels of streams and keep sand-catching driftwood from piling up along the high tide mark. “You have only to watch a wave banging into a wall to know it's not effective,” says Mr Smither, who is now working on a long stretch of beach at Waimarama,. near Hastings, for the Maori people. “The beaches I have been involved with so far have been settled or worked on by people. It is people who really made the problems. Mostly it was done out of ignorance, not out of a desire to destroy the beaches. "Usually, part of their building programme interferes with the natural formation of land.

“Sand moves like a liquid, or a very fine mud. Stones, concrete, and even tyres can form rigid barriers that actually encourage erosion.

“People who say they are trying to retain beaches are often trying to establish real estate.”

Many built-up seaside areas in the world face huge bills to repair sea damage “because they can’t stop it coming in if it wants to.” If the world is losing its ozone layer, as some evidence suggests, the world’s sea levels are rising, “so stone walls are the very worst things that can be put on the edge of the ocean at present.”

Re-established dune systems would be able to naturally deal with small sea level fluctuations. Such systems would mean removing foreshore buildings in most cities, “and there would have to be some sort of disaster before that happens," says Michael Smither.

There have been both successes and failures with the Fitzroy Beach project. The drift-wood-induced dune system, is still successful, he says, and “without it, they would have lost the beach entirely by now, as they freely admit.” "But on top of that, they have gone ahead with groynes and wall systems, which I advised against.” The groynes restrict the river current, “and they shoot sand straight out to sea.” He did manage to- convince authorities to bend slightly the end of one of the two groynes, and the beach has built up at that end. Heavy river sand has been deposited along the beach-

front, and finer sand has been blown ashore to help form dunes.

Waves from the sea can act as a saw blade along the edge of a groyne, says Mr Smither. That creates a hole, and sand begins to migrate toward the hole. “You create a draining, pumping sort of system that pushes the sand out.”

Natural sandbars, left alone, break up wave energy out to sea. When sandbars are eliminated or shifted, you break up the protection that allows -a beach to build up.

In New Plymouth, his beachbuilding project organised a collection of driftwood material — garden rubbish — through radio advertising, “and we fed the beach with this stuff in as natural a form as possible.” The problem with a bureaucracy, Mr Smither adds, is its reluctance to stand back and wait for nature to take its course. Walls and groynes are visible reminders that money is being spent to achieve something.

Some of the driftwood material was neatly cut and tied up with wire to form another inflexible system. Normally, floods and weathering do the neatening work on material washed down to the sea. Floods tear out branches and other growth along riverbanks, which are “processed” by the stream.

Met by storm waves at the rivermouth, the future driftwood is distributed along the front of the beach. Bigger pieces dig into the sand. Driftwood becomes a nutrient for dune plants. For instance, star-shaped spinifex seeds flod along until they are caught in driftwood. A pyramid of sand forms round the seed, which is hatched in the sand. It is the natural way to get the seeds to germinate. "You have to think as though you are replacing a natural system,” says Mr Smither, instead

of having work gangs chopping up riverbank growth and burning

“I haye had letters from all over the world, asking me to come and fix their beaches. It is an intuitive job, like the I Ching. You feed in a number of twigs, and the way they turn out is the answer.”

Marram grass, a common growth these days on New Zealand dunes, is an import to this country that could be doing more harm then good “because it forms the wrong shape,” he says. The grass “grows too fast and collects too much sand. It forms very clumpy, steep dunes. We need a long, low flat dune system. With a steep dune system, you deflect the waves.” Native plants, such as spinifex, put out leaders, exploratory strands that survive in a storm, and heal the cuts of wave action. “With marram grass, all you get is a cliff."

Native sand dune plants had no genetic system to protect against the ravages of grazing cattle, which ate all the ground cover.

Mr Smither, who is also advising on a beach at Raglan, says that one of New Zealand’s problems has been the removal of driftwood, a removal that coincided with the arrival of the motor car. It became traditional to drive to a beach and fill up the boot with wood. He makes notes on beach conditions wherever he goes, and

takes photos. He has not yet seen the Canterbury coastline, but is living in Christchurch for six months and will get there sometime. He has written a yetunpublished book about the beach system. He laments the eclipse of “the good old temporary New Zealand bach” by more substantial models that require roads, sewer lines, and electricity. Local bodies and bureaucracy get involved, “and as soon as the property gets threatened by the sea, they put up a wall because the baches have become valuable assets.”

. "The irony of the New Zealand coast is that there is more sand in pur system at present than we have ever had.”

Because of inland farming development, rivers contain a lot of silt “and are spewing out sand,” he says. “The. amount of sand hitting our coasts is phenomenal. “It is a very interesting situation, but it is beset by enormous problems. Eight or nine bodies have jurisdiction Over our coastal strip, and nobody seems to be able to agree on what ought to be done. And the only sensible thing to do seems to be to recreate what was being done before we arrived.

“On a political level, things have become extremely complicated. I believe in getting down there and doing the job.” That means placing branches the right way at the high tide mark and letting the sea arrange them.

Success and

failures