Manzanilla's disappearing coastline

Over the last decade, fish­er­men and guest house own­ers in Man­zanil­la have looked on in awe as the wa­ters of the At­lantic Ocean claimed huge ar­eas of land along the coast­line.
Most of the co­conut trees that once adorned the 15 miles of beach­front on the east coast are gone and those that re­main may very well be gone with­in a decade if we are un­able to stem the ero­sion.
Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar coastal pro­tec­tion projects over the years in an at­tempt to stop the ero­sion. But the sea would not be stopped.
While fish­er­men con­tend that coastal ero­sion was just Moth­er Na­ture go­ing about her busi­ness, di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) Dr Ah­mad Khan said ris­ing sea lev­els, brought on by glob­al warm­ing, was the cul­prit.
Start­ing this week, Guardian Me­dia will show you how glob­al warm­ing is wreak­ing hov­oc on T&T's ecosys­tem.
Dur­ing a vis­it to Man­zanil­la about two weeks ago, at least ten prop­er­ties ap­peared aban­doned, with weeds grow­ing where vis­i­tors once en­joyed them­selves. Sev­er­al oth­er build­ings had huge “For Sale” signs plas­tered on their gates.
At one of the few prop­er­ties that was oc­cu­pied—the Co­conut Cove Re­sort—38-year-old An­der­son Bartholomew, who has man­aged the re­sort along Ca­lyp­so Road, Man­zanil­la, for the last ten years, said he was born and bred in the area and has seen the sea wreck hav­oc on the beach­front for years.
Bartholomew said the re­sort was once well known for its clump of co­conut trees where guests could re­lax in ham­mocks and watch the waves crash against the shore. But ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en years ago, the two lots of land on which the trees were plant­ed be­gan to dis­ap­pear in­to the sea.
“In front of the re­sort, we lost about two lots of land al­ready, we had co­conut trees and ham­mocks for the guests to re­lax and all of that is gone, all of it washed away,” Bartholomew said.
Five years ago, the re­sort’s own­ers tried to stop the wa­ter from tak­ing more of the land by spend­ing some $500,000 to build a sea wall. Dur­ing the vis­it, the dam­age to the wall was clear­ly vis­i­ble as chunks of it have been washed away.
Bartholomew said be­cause the re­sort has a pool, guests can still en­joy them­selves but he is con­stant­ly asked what will hap­pen if the sea claims more of the land.
“The guests are still com­fort­able but peo­ple are al­ways ask­ing if we don’t fear that the sea will come and take the wall and the pool, but we say that’s a part of na­ture, there is noth­ing we can do but let it take its course.”
Fish­er­man An­ton Hayde, who has a healthy re­spect for the sea, said life on the east coast has be­come in­creas­ing­ly hard­er over the years as the wa­ters of the At­lantic con­tin­ue to claim more and more of the beach­front.
In 2014, the bat­ter­ing waves claimed the Man­zanil­la Fish­ing De­pot.
“I watch the riv­er change course and the sea come up and cut away the whole de­pot, every­thing just wash in­to the sea. I feel in a few years, all here where we stand­ing up will go too, but that is how it is, the sea will take what she want, when she want."
He said he can vivid­ly re­mem­ber his glo­ry days as a teenag­er bound­ing through co­conut trees to reach the beach­front.
“You used to feel so good to run through the co­conuts, we used to race each oth­er and you run­ning for a good ten min­utes, on­ly see­ing the sea in the dis­tance…boy, them was the days. Now, you dri­ving and the beach out­side your car win­dow, it could nev­er be the same again. Some days I does say Man­zanil­la is a lost cause…cause is on­ly time be­fore the sea go with every­thing you see here.”
Hayde's words were truer than he an­tic­i­pat­ed as af­ter leav­ing his pair of slip­pers on the shore to cross the riv­er and show the Guardian Me­dia team around, he re­turned to find on­ly one side of it.
“You see, I shoul­da walk down bare­foot yes,” he said. “I have to buy a slip­pers now.”
Along the Man­zanil­la stretch Shquile Ce­les­tine, 25, was busy try­ing to lev­el the yard of his un­cle’s hol­i­day rental.
Ce­les­tine, who said he has been do­ing main­te­nance and up­keep of the prop­er­ty since he was a teen, said just last year he piled huge boul­ders along the shore­line to try to keep the wa­ter out.
Like Bartholomew and the own­ers of Co­conut Cove, Ce­les­tine has learnt that the sea would not be stopped.
“Most of the stones have been washed away, the few pieces that are left will wash away soon, every time I come up here, I fill up the yard and try to lev­el it be­cause you can’t have guests com­ing to see these big gap­ing holes in the yard,” he said.
With waves crash­ing less than 20 feet from the prop­er­ty fence at low tide, Ce­les­tine said the yard is flood­ed every time the tide is high.
He point­ed to a heap of “over­bur­den” dirt that was de­liv­ered that very day.
“I hop­ing this would be able to get a lit­tle chance to set­tle and it wouldn’t wash away with the high tide.”
A stone’s throw away at Waves, a new­ly-con­struct­ed beach re­treat, Tony Ram­lal was busy mix­ing con­crete to be­gin con­struc­tion on a shed.
Ram­lal, whose sis­ter “Ted­dy” Ram­lal owns the prop­er­ty, was un­daunt­ed by the ris­ing sea lev­el. He said his sis­ter has faith that her busi­ness in­vest­ment will pay off and they are not wor­ried about the sea.
How­ev­er, he said plans are un­der­way to cre­ate a small sea wall to mit­i­gate the an­tic­i­pat­ed dam­age.
“We will try to bury some tyres and make a wall to stop it from com­ing in so much,” he said.
$$ spent so far
•On No­vem­ber 16, 2014, a large sec­tion of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Main Road col­lapsed af­ter flood­wa­ters from the high tide and pro­longed rain­fall cov­ered large parts of Ma­yaro and Man­zanil­la. It was re­built at a COST OF $35 mil­lion and re­opened in Feb­ru­ary 1, 2015.
• In Ju­ly, 2015 the then Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment built the Man­zanil­la Board­walk across 800 feet of beach­front to stop the rapid ero­sion and cre­ate a space for beach­go­ers to en­joy the east coast again.
• The Coastal Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) un­der the cur­rent PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion is con­struct­ing a re­tain­ing wall just be­fore the "Co­conuts" in Man­zanil­la, a project that is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by May this year. 
Tack­ling coastal ero­sion: The Bar­ba­dos Mod­el
In a 2013 pa­per ti­tled the “Coastal Zone Man­age­ment The Bar­ba­dos Mod­el” two mem­bers of the Amer­i­can Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion doc­u­ment­ed Bar­ba­dos’ fight to save its coast­line.
The au­thors, Gre­go­ry Scrug­gs and Thomas Bas­set, not­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s move to form a Coastal Zone Man­age­ment Unit (CZ­MU) in 1996 when it recog­nised there was an im­me­di­ate need to stem coastal ero­sion.
Backed by fund­ing from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the CZ­MU man­aged to stop the ero­sion with var­i­ous coastal en­gi­neer­ing projects in­clud­ing con­struct­ing sea­walls, break­wa­ters, and groynes.
•Break­wa­ters are con­crete struc­tures, sunken close to the beach, that force waves to break far­ther from the coast so they don’t di­rect­ly pum­mel the sand.
•Groynes are rock struc­tures that jut out in­to the ocean to dis­rupt the move­ment of sed­i­ment.
•Sea­walls are the CZ­MU’s largest type of in­ter­ven­tion, in­tend­ed to pro­tect more pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas, these con­struc­tion projects in­volve ei­ther a riprap de­sign of large rocks or a flat, con­crete sea­wall that can cre­ate pub­lic space at­trac­tive to both tourists and res­i­dents, such as the Richard Haynes Board­walk, par­tial­ly fund­ed by an IDB loan.
•Nat­ur­al meth­ods were al­so used, in­clud­ing restor­ing sand dunes and man­groves and plant­i­ng veg­e­ta­tion in coastal ar­eas to al­low dunes to form nat­u­ral­ly, hold­ing back in­un­da­tions from storm surges.
The IDB’s web­site states that Bar­ba­dos is con­sid­ered “a best-prac­tice mod­el” for the Caribbean.
“From 2002 to 2009, the coun­try built head­lands, break­wa­ters, re­tain­ing walls, and walk­ways and revet­ments to sta­bilise its shore­line and con­trol beach ero­sion on the south and west coasts. The key for Bar­ba­dos to de­sign and car­ry out cost-ef­fec­tive sus­tain­able beach nour­ish­ment op­er­a­tions has been un­der­stand­ing shore­line dy­nam­ics based on the best avail­able sci­en­tif­ic da­ta and cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy that takes in­to ac­count dis­as­ter risk and the im­pact of cli­mate change,” the IDB said.
Source:  Trinidad Guardian, Feb 28, 2019

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