Winning Land From the Sea

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7084, 5 December 1929, Page 7

Winning Land From the Sea

PREVENTING COAST EROSION IN ENGLAND. '

Coast erosion is apparently once more to be made the subject of an inquiry by the British Government. In the years since the royal commission of 1909 issued its. report, the destructive effect of wind, rain, frost, waves, and tidal currents has been so great in some places that it is felt that new measures may be necessary. The commission of 1909 found, that in the sections studied far more land had been gained within recent years by accretion than lost by erosion. To take an example mentioned by Hilaire Belloc, Dungeness is slowly creeping out to see. A lighthouse built 100 years ago where Dungeness then was is now a mile inland. An even more striking instance is furnished by Lympne, which, now several miles inland, was once a coast town. But the commission of 1909 was careful to point out that the gain from depositions of sediment at tho mouths of tidal rivers may bo but a poor recompense for the crumbling of the open coast. Moreover, this accretion is a process strictly limited in time. Thus, although the danger from erosion is not alarming, there are grounds for thinking that a new inquiry into the present position would be. valuable. Allied to the' question of erosion is that of reclammation, and a project has just been revived for work of this nature to be attempted in tho Wash, which, with its neighbouring areas, contains somo of the finest agricultural land in the United Kingdom. The diffit culties in tho way of such a scheme arc enormous, as the experiences of the Norfolk Estuary Company, in its attempt to reclaim somo 32,000 acres of this land, sufficiently show.* But enterprises of a considerably greater magnitude have proved practicable in Holland, and the rewards which tho idea offers are very attractive. If successfully carried out, the reclamation of the Wash would give improved drainage to the Fenland, probably the most productive agricultural land in Great Britain; it would afford access at all states of the tide to King’s Lynn, Boston and Lincoln, while at the same time providing employment for a considerable amount of labour.