Peter Black and South Wales West Liberal Democrats

Sand Dredging

Diolch Llywydd. The reason that this motion has been tabled today is to reflect the huge anxiety and concern that is felt in South West Wales and in particular Swansea, Gower and Porthcawl regarding the continuing dredging operations in the Bristol Channel.

I understand fully that decisions taken by Ministers on these matters are not easy and that in fact the previous Assembly Government published a Marine Aggregate Dredging Policy in which they sought to define zones in which dredging was more acceptable. However, none of this has gone far enough to allay fears nor do we yet know enough about the movement of sand within the Bristol Channel to be able to say with any certainty what the impact of any dredging operation will be on our beaches. That is why we have been urging a precautionary approach in this matter.

Prior to 1991, a total of 741,000 tonnes had been dredged from Helwick over a 27 year period. The recent license granted to Llanelli Sand Dredging Limited is a case in point. This Labour Plaid government has now given a consent to them to remove a further 150,000 tonnes per year from the Helwick Bank over the next seven years.

The location of this dredging work is in an area defined by the Assembly Government as one where a precautionary approach will be taken until research and monitoring reduces uncertainty. The inspector may have concluded that this removal of sand will not damage Port Eynon beach but there is no evidence either way to substantiate his conclusion, in fact all the anecdotal evidence points to him being wrong.

This is a good example of where that precautionary approach should have been taken, but was not. In fact this decision raises fundamental questions about the government's commitment to preserving some of Wales' best beaches. Any erosion in the attractiveness of these beaches is bad for Wales, bad for tourism, bad for our environment and bad for our economy.

The fact is that we simply do not have enough of an understanding of the environment of the Bristol Channel to know what the impact of removing this sand is going to have. Tidal patterns and sediment circulation are complex factors that can be altered drastically by changes to the seabed caused by dredging.

I understand of course that this sand is needed for building work but would argue that we cannot take short term considerations into account when are considering the future of our environment. There are of course other ways of securing sand, including recovery and recycling that has not yet been used to its full capacity.

I note also in this morning's Western Mail that an academic at Swansea Institute believes that much of the sand loss from Gower beaches is attributable to increasingly severe storms due to climate change. There is also the accumulative effect of river barrages to take into account, but the truth is that none of these theories are provable as yet. Sand dredging could still be a major factor and in my view and in the view of many others that remains the case.

The new application that is presently before the Government to remove up to three million tonnes per year from the Bristol Channel is also problematic. Although the identified area is within a zone designated as one in which the Assembly will look favourably on dredging for marine aggregates, it is still less than ten miles from the Gower coast and its impact on beaches is uncertain.

Just to put this into perspective, the area in which the dredging will take place is the size of Gower itself. Effectively, RMA will be conducting an open cast mining operation under water that will remove all sand down to the rock below. The questions arise over how long the consequent holes in the seabed will take to fill in as they move towards the coast and also which part of the coast they will hit. If the sand has not been replenished then neither will be the beaches.

The point of this motion is that without further research we cannot know how beaches will be affected by the new application. There needs to be adequate monitoring of existing operations but there also has to be an independent study into the impact of new applications. Without such studies I do not see how Ministers can come to a rational decision on these applications nor how the Assembly Government can maintain its commitment to sustainability and the environment.

Summing up

Peter Black: The party that proposed this motion runs the local council, therefore, we made our representations through the council, in terms of opposing the applications that are being put forward. Therefore, I do not think that we have been quiet on this in any way whatsoever.

The Minister has outlined a whole range of different studies, in terms of dredging and in terms of the Bristol channel, and I am not going to dispute the fact that it is an impressive list. What she is effectively saying, therefore, is that, because of those studies, the Labour-Plaid Cymru Government is 100 per cent confident that the applications that it has approved in terms of dredging has no impact on the beaches of Gower, Porthcawl and the rest of the west Wales coast. If that is what the Minister and this Government is saying, I am sure that the people of Gower and Swansea will be greatly reassured by that statement. However, I do not believe for one moment that they can give that 100 per cent reassurance, because there is simply not the evidence to back it up.

Certainly, in terms of the latest application, there is no way that the Minister, or any independent study that we have in front of us, can conclusively say what will happen in relation to the 3 million tonnes of sand-and area the size of Gower-that will be removed from the middle of the Bristol channel and how that will impact on the coast. The reason why they cannot say that is because the evidence is not available and the independent study has not been carried out to give that reassurance as to how that application will impact on beaches. That applies to a great deal of the dredging work that happens around the Gower peninsula.

I welcome the Minister's assurance that the dredging will be moved further offshore, because, clearly, the further offshore this dredging takes place, the safer the beaches of Gower will be. As I said in my speech in introducing this motion, I understand that there are other factors, but no-one can be certain what is causing the loss of sand off the beaches of Gower, Porthcawl and other beaches in south west Wales. Minister, we do not have those comprehensive independent studies, and if that continues to be the case, we will not know the reason for certain. The precautionary approach, which you say that you have applied, is clearly not being applied carefully enough. Therefore, I ask the Assembly to support this motion.