Gower SOS Blog: How to protest

Gower SOS Blog: How to protest

Hi Listen to Mike Jenkins 24/1/07 on The Wave Gower SOS

Please read the Times article, get worked up and forward this e-mail to your entire address book.

After walking with my daughter at Pobbles this morning and Cockling at Oxwich beach yesterday I have no doubt that more rocks have appeared as sand has been removed. The cockle bed has only inches of sand above mud, cockles were scarce, we gathered about 40 Clams strewn on the beach as the recent gales had dug them from their unsheltered beds. I have never seen this in 5 years of working on Oxwich beach. Pobbles is very different to last year. Why should we fight to stop the dredging of our sand banks and ultimately our beaches? The sand dredgers should be stopped and asked to prove convincingly, without doubt that this damage is not being caused by them, before we allow further dredging. The damage to our beaches is now scarily obvious to me, who else has been taking a valuable tourism resource from under our nose? I understand the seasonal shifts in sand, sand bank creation and the channels tidal streams, I also understand the livelihoods and bank rolls that will be affected. This is a multi million pound rape of our coastline with complete disregard for locals, visitors and the future.

A Debate on BBC Wales radio. Euphoria skipper Mike Jenkins takes on the dredging company and a Swansea City Council councillor and gives a very good account. Gower SOS needs supporting big time.

The Sunday Times - Travel
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2100-2555415,00.html

'They've stolen our beach'

THE BEACHES of the Gower Peninsula have been damaged by offshore dredging, environmentalists claim — but the Welsh Assembly is refusing to ban the practice. More than 500,000 cubic metres of sand have been taken from Helwick Bank, which lies two miles off the Gower Peninsula, since large-scale dredging operations started in 1993. Even though the sand has not been taken directly from the beach, locals say that the offshore dredging has resulted in coastal sand being depleted. Photographs of Horton beach in the 1960s show vast swathes of pale sand; today, shots of the same area show nothing but rocks and alluvial mud. “The beaches have dropped by as much as 5ft in places,” says Mike Jenkins, of the pressure group Gower SOS. “We rely heavily on tourism here, and if they take away the beaches, people will stop coming. We’re calling for a ban on commercial dredging within 15½ miles of the shore.” More than 1m tonnes of sand continues to be removed every year for use in the construction industry by multinational aggregate companies such as Hanson and Royal Boskalis. The Welsh Assembly has sided with the multinationals, which export as much as 30% of their aggregates to EU countries where inshore dredging is banned. “Before any moratorium is granted, there must be evidence to justify it,” it said.