Toti lagoon: Mother Nature will look after her own
Anyone who monitored the restoration of the rail embankment will testify to the difficulty that the contractors had in trying to divert the river and maintain an open mouth closer to the weir, enabling them to work in a relatively dry area.
EDITOR – In recent articles reporting on Amanzimtoti River issues, it is often stated that the river has been ‘diverted’ by someone, implying that man had a hand in this diversion.
The truth is Mother Nature has chosen the course this river runs and will continue to run until factors influencing its course changes.
These factors depend on beach and sand bar profiles, sea currents, wave action, tidal surges, wind strengths and direction, rainfall frequency and volumes to name a few.
Some have suggested that the river be ‘breached’ to restore order as they know it, or would like it to be, again not fully understanding this term, as ‘breaching’ refers to the opening or closing of a river mouth and as the Toti River has been flowing freely out to sea through an open mouth for many months, no breaching is required.
Anyone who monitored the restoration of the rail embankment will testify to the difficulty that the contractors had in trying to divert the river and maintain an open mouth closer to the weir, enabling them to work in a relatively dry area. This was a continuous and expensive daily exercise, as overnight the river would simply choose its route south.
In short, the ski boat club may need to acknowledge that prevailing sea, wind and rainfall factors will decide when the river mouth migrates and hopefully the engineers who designed the new sand bag embankment have taken these factors into account to mitigate a repeat of the embankment being eroded away.
Another controversial and debatable matter is that of the weir. Yes it is man-made and should not be there, and yes it does in some instances interfere with tidal surges into the lagoon, however it was originally put there to create a lagoon environment with deeper water depth suitable for paddle boats. There is a very real possibility that without the weir being there, the lagoon would not exist as most of us today know it. It will then be the paddlers who will be deprived of a suitable water depth. I would like to know what those who lament the weir have to say about most of the town centre, civic centre and Hutchison Park development which is essentially ‘reclaimed’ wetland belonging to the river. Amanzimtoti River has effectively been ‘canalised’ from the low-level crossing at the Old River Gardens, with the weir being a ‘cherry on the top’.
Mother Nature is the most powerful of forces and will look after her own, we need to be mindful of how we tread in her domain.
