Beira: Breaking the waves

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Beira: Breaking the waves

7:29 CAT | 28 Apr 2021

FILE - Rising sea water level in Beira in 2019. [File photo: DW]

The capital of Sofala province in central Mozambique wants to protect its seafront, severely damaged by the passage of Tropical Cyclone Idai in 2019. The plan includes the construction of a concrete sea wall.

The municipal council of Beira, in central Mozambique, plans to build a sea wall to protect the city’s coast against the encroaching sea water.

The work is part of a project budgeted at close to US92 million, of which the city already has more than US$80 million, mayor Albano Carige said in an exclusive interview with DW Africa.

Carige says that at a study is being carried out by the city council and partners to assess work along a ten kilometre stretch of the city’s coast, but it is already acknowledged that it must include the construction of a wall from the Praia Nova area all the way to Estoril, a region considered more critical.

Beira.mayor_.dw_ — *Beira mayor Albano Carige*

The study, which should be concluded by October of this year, “includes [detailed information on] the direction of the tides, the directions of the winds and eventually the discharges of the waves themselves, and how it is possible to dissipate their energy”.

“[The study] will result in a detailed drawing of a great engineering project,” Mayor Carige declares. The wall will, in some sections, be perpendicularly connected with spurs whose function, the mayor says, is to “break the waves”.

“When this wave comes, with a very large energy due to its height, the cut that the wave encounters immediately causes its energy to dissipate, ending with a low energy wave that the reinforced concrete wall can absorb without damage,” he explains.

Small works must go on

While waiting for the completion of this gigantic project, the city is continuing smaller projects in order to avoid further degradation of the seafront, already severely affected by the passage of Tropical Cyclone Idai in 2019.

Beiraflood.dw_ — *Beira has been hit by cyclones*

“We never stop! We have a department of coastal protection, risk management and calamities, within the construction council, that deals with possible natural phenomena and disasters. Its main focus is the possible consequences of the passage of any natural phenomenon,” Albano Carige relates.

According to the mayor of Beira, the amount of money available for the materialisation of the coastal protection project is already enough to start work.

“Coastal maintenance and protection is quite expensive. If we think that we need to have the whole amount to start work, we risk being invaded by the sea, and left to reminisce afterwards that if we had taken steps with what little we had, we could have minimised the damage,” he says. “With the completion of this study, at the beginning of next year, we will start the coastal protection scheme, once we have a competitor who has won [the tender] to move forward,” he promises.

Sand pumping

Of the entire Beira coast, Praia Nova is the most vulnerable, since this is always where the sea invades at high tide. To reverse this, Carige proposes that sand be pumped into the area, from where it been subtracted for decades by the dredging of the Beira port channel.

“There were several opinions, and one of them is sand pumping. Because when EMODRAGA carries out dredging, it deposits its own sands or aggregates in or on the bottom of the sea. What we are saying is that this sands must be pumped onto our coast. In the part of Praia Nova where there are residences, we need about three million to four million cubic meters of sand to ensure that [the beach] is a little wider,” the mayor says.

But to guarantee the maintenance of seafront protection, there must be some element of profitability, Albano Carige says.

“We need to take advantage of this area for tourism and to guarantee the maintenance management of the coastal protection system itself, because it must be managed, it must be maintained. We need to have some revenue that can help create conditions for routine maintenance once the project is finished,” he concludes.

Source: Deutsche Welle