With the villa beach rapidly eroding, the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines is planning to give the beach an injection of white sand.
This was disclosed by Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves during his appearance on WE FM’s Issue At Hand program.
Minister Gonsalves also made mention of reef rehabilitation work that is expected to take place in the future that will fix damage caused to the area in the past.
“The villa beach, which is eroding rapidly needs an injection of sand, but it needs an inject of white sand, it doesn’t need more sand from the black sand area at Brighton. There have been some white sand deposits identified but we have not completed the analysis as to whether or not there would be environment impacts to dredging from those locations, so that work is ongoing. If the work is not complete by the time the dredging boat comes back, we’d have to then order the dredging boat back on the Government’s dime, to have them back, but we have developed a relationship with the company and they’re essentially waiting on us to tell them when to come and where to dredge,” he said.
The finance minister said that the Government also plans to initiate rehabilitation on the reef at the Villa beach area, in an attempt to reverse damage from the past.
“Those of you who have been around a little bit longer know that once upon a time they blew a whole in the reef in Villa beach to facilitate sea planes landing there, long time ago, and in blowing the whole in that reef they changed the drift in the water which has had an eroding impact on that beach since then. These things take place over many years before you notice the impact. We are also analyzing with some coastal engineers out of Barbados the best way to rehabilitate that piece of reef to redirect the flow of water the way it used to be before we destroyed the reef,” he said.
Minister Gonsalves said that the Government is working actively on this, but will not dredge any sand from any location until the appropriate analyses have been completed.
