Beach Club wall under construction.
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands--The sea wall project at Regal Beach Club condos on Seven Mile Beach, which has been causing a stir on social media as construction materials continue to fall into the sea, is an example of how efforts to address the beach erosion on Cayman’s famous but now dwindling stretch of beach can make things worse. The project to build a sea wall to protect the property is only part way through but the wall is already in the ocean.
This illustrates not only the futility of the effort, but also how much further the beach has eroded since the owners were granted planning permission for the wall. The Department of Environment (DoE) said that the project is problematic, but there are no mitigating measures that can be deployed.
A spokesperson from the department told CNS last week that they have advised the developer to get the project completed as quickly as possible now, because the process is contaminating the marine environment as aggregate and construction materials are constantly washing into the ocean.
The DoE’s recommendation not to grant planning permission for this wall was ignored by the Central Planning Authority (CPA). Now there is no advice to offer the developers to lessen the adverse impacts and there is nothing that can be done except to expedite the project to reduce the amount of debris getting into the water.
The condo complex is one of a number of properties stretching from Ken Dart’s private family residence to the Grand Cayman Marriott Beach Resort that are now suffering the direct consequences of building concrete structures too close to the water’s edge, on a dynamic beach, in the face of rising sea levels.
The owners at Regal Beach secured planning permission last year but the project did not need a coastal works licence, as the work was, at the time, still intended to be within the property footprint and under the jurisdiction of the planning department. However, due to the erosion, the sea is already lapping at the wall, which is still under construction.
A spokesperson for Regal Beach told CNS earlier this year they were hoping that by building a proper seawall to replace the previous garden wall they could protect the condos. But this additional concrete structure will compound the problem of beach erosion along this stretch of Seven Mile Beach, and there is no sign of the sand returning.
The DoE continues to urge the CPA not to grant approval to applicants seeking to erect hard structures on the beach, because this does little to increase the resilience of properties against the inevitable effects of climate change, such as coastal flooding, storm surge and erosion, but does have a detrimental impact on the beach and compounds the erosion.
The current work at Regal Beach is serving to illustrate how allowing more construction on the beach fuels the beach loss problem and leads to pollution of the water along the beach.
The new PACT government has made a commitment to address this issue and Premier Wayne Panton, as Minister for Sustainability and Climate Resiliency, has established a task force to examine the causes of the erosion and potential solutions.
Panton recently visited the Marriott hotel, which has a substantial concrete footprint on what was once a dynamic beach and has suffered the consequences. It has now been more than a year since the Marriott had any beach at all and the likelihood of it returning is very low.
The DoE experts have already said that in most cases the only solution is a managed retreat for existing properties and amendments to the planning law to increase the high-water mark setbacks to more appropriate distances. ~ Cayman News Service ~
