We must prioritise coastal protection and tackle erosion

WITH memories of storms a year ago still fresh, people in coastal areas worry about a recurrence of the damage and flooding — made worse by a lack of hope that anything meaningful will be done about the situation.

Coastal protection has never been a national priority and, given the ongoing dearth of State cash, is unlikely to be. While the storms highlighted the vulnerability of our coastline, we are still “lagging far behind” our European neighbours in regard to coastal protection and tackling erosion, according to one of the country’s leading experts.

Dr Jimmy Murphy, of UCC’s marine research centre, says new strategies are needed to deal with large-scale coastal erosion, adding that while Government had funded the repair of much of the recent damage, there is a continuing failure to tackle the underlying issue of how to manage our coastline on a national basis.

If, as predicted, the storms become more frequent — every five to 10 years — we need to plan long term. Ireland is already doing this in terms of flood protection schemes and considerable resources have been committed, but coastal erosion still remains a low national priority, he points out.

Writing in the Engineer’s Journal, Dr Murphy says about half of our 6,000km coastline is ‘’soft’’, with about 500km actively eroding and at risk. Storms not only bring high waves to the shoreline, but also raised water levels through storm surges, which allow waves to directly attack dunes and cliffs.

During last year’s storms, water levels were frequently more than one metre higher than the predicted tide. On one occasion in Galway Bay, levels were 1.5m higher than expected.

Climate change as it relates to coastal erosion normally means changes to storm patterns, giving rise to more frequent severe events. The storms a year ago represented a cluster of severe events and Dr Murphy found that the one-in-one-year waves were exceeded seven times in just over a month.

In many countries, there is an overall coastal erosion management strategy for action at national, regional or local level. Such strategies are normally based on detailed knowledge of what happens on the coast. In Ireland, the Irish Coastal Protection Strategy Study (ICPSS) has been ongoing for a number of years and whilst it has not yet developed a strategy, it has produced erosion risk maps based on detailed site surveys.

Ireland is moving to a stage where we will need to develop a coastal erosion strategy, according to Dr Murphy, and, whilst progress is being made, it is likely that the severity and frequency of Atlantic storms will be the main drivers in determining when we will start to act proactively rather than reacting to crises.