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| Photo Courtesy of DIPNR: Note the sand spit which is the favoured nesting site for visiting shore birds. |
Last Thursday the Southern Natural Resources and Flood Plain management Committee made the decision to delay any action in regards to opening Lake Conjola.
The bulldozers were due to start work this morning to cut a channel to open the lake to the sea.
The committee came to a consensus decision that spending the meagre budget to open Lake Conjola at this point in time would not only be a waste of money but a serious imposition on the nesting endangered shorebirds ( Little Terns), and likely to fail given the low volume of water in the catchment.
Opening a lake is more likely to have a sustained effect if there is a good head of flood water behind the entrance cut to help force away the gazillions of tonnes of sand that have migrated via tidal forces to the northern end of the beach.
The opening of Lake Conjola is a hot button issue that sparks all sorts of reactions particularly on the lead up to Christmas holidays- so to come to this decision was not just logical but could even be expressed as monumental and proves that community does have the capacity to make decisions that may go against a preferred policy position but are the most beneficial given the circumstance.
Lake Conjola's entrance management plan has always sought to keep the Lake opened as it used to be an unsewered area and was subject to rogue spills in the catchment. It is also a low lying area that is flood prone. Since the development of the policy the sewer has been put on reducing the risk of human waste entering the system. Floods however can not be planned for or manipulated. The current position taken by the committee makes sure that if the threat of flood is imminent then the lake can be opened.
2 comments:
Does this mean that the lake entrance work will not be carried out at all this summer?
I was in the lake on the 11/12/10 and it was almost black and in dire need of a good flow of water in and out.
Hi Paul- The lake was opened on the weekend of 5 December 2010- although I believe that there have been significant southerly swells pushing ocean stored sand back into the mouth of the lake. If the lake should close again which at this point is highly likely with the swell conditions- it will not be reopened untill 1mAHD is reached which is a critical point for localised flooding.
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