This week crews are working to fix the crumbling Trail Bay seawall, which was badly damaged by a big storm in March.
"The work you're seeing is a short to mid-term solution to make the place safe, and while we're doing that, we'll also be testing a couple of designs on how we stack the rock wall system with natural vegetation," said District of Sechelt manager of sustainability and special projects Emanuel Machado.
He said after the storm the District hired Kerr Wood Leidal (KWL) to assess the damage and recommend repairs.
KWL recommended things like angling the wall back as much as possible, sinking large anchor stones in at the base of the wall and planting native vegetation like dune grass to help make the wall more stable.
A long, sloped-back seawall would best break up the energy from ocean surges, said KWL civil engineer Dave Matsubara. He added that his company's fix had to fit between the public foreshore and a popular walking trail atop the seawall.
"We have to work within the constraints of what we're meeting on either side, but where we can we'll be trying to create more of a slope than a wall to make it kind of a shallower structure just because it's a little more conducive to stability in the big storms," Matsubara said. "It won't look a lot different, but to the picky eye you'll see some subtle differences."
He assures the changes will make for a stronger, safer wall, but notes in the future a more long-term solution will have to be found.
"If the predictions on sea level rise materialize like they're supposed to, it will become a more common event to have larger storms along the entire Coast, and this is a fairly exposed area," Matsubara noted.
Superintendent of public works Phil Strain said talk around a long-term seawall solution has already started, and a plan will be presented to council in the future.
"We will come up with a final design that the District will have to look at and phase in as funds are available," Strain said, noting the fix won't be easy. "We have to take into account definitely property lines, and to maintain the waterfront trail is also another constraint. People wouldn't want to see that gone either. So all those constraints have to be taken into consideration for whatever final design we come up with."
The cost for the short-term solution is estimated at $70,000. Strain said crews will be working on the seawall until at least the end of the month.
