Heads up to anyone heading to Augusta this summer to Kite. The river mouth has been opened a km or so back up at the Colour Patch, where it was about 20 odd years ago.
Might not affect the nice long butter flat runs this year but I'm sure it'll silt up over the coming seasons. hopefully the change has the desired affect of flushing and cleansing the inlet.
In answer to your Qu I have no Idea where the original "natural mouth" was
I know it's been dug out in the same place before, possibly back mid 60's/70s by a bunch of farmers before there was and EPA DEP CALM etc etc. the idea being to get more of a tidal flushing to wash out a lot od the silt and algal buildup. I think there is a lot less water running down the river these days as well which isn't helping.
ok maybe not natural but the current river mouth. When I was there in February the river was open to the ocean about 2-3km up the beach (east?)
I think what has happened is the natural river mouth has been slowly moving eastwards over the last few years. LGA was concerned that it wasn't flushing as well and causing stagnant water near colour patch ... so bingo lets cut ourselves a fresh one
The original plan was to block up the current river mouth and re cut another one at the colourpatch. This option was going to be too expensive and put the town at risk of flooding. So they've now put the cut in at the colourpatch and kept the other opening.
The real problem lies upriver - the algae blooms are caused by phosphate run off from the farms. Based on previous experience, the cut will not improve water quality of the river.
What the cut has done is removed access to the 2 kms of sand spit and Jays beach, changed the wave at Jays beach and changed the conditions for kitesurfing. Its too early to say how the conditions will be affected. I think the river side of the cut will probably silt up over time.
That looks like some good flat water, someone needs to tell them it would work better if they made it wider.
we had a similar issue back home where there were water quality issues. There was a mouth up the beach but some farmers dug another opening about 500m away. Few heavy rainfall periods, some big surf and 6 months later the sand spit that created the nice flat water was erroded away.
Just finished a great session at Augusta this arvo - fun long waves and plenty of wind!
No new river mouth any more either - going to take a lot of digging to move the sand thats in there at the moment!
What numpties. Putting in the cut will have absolutely no impact on water quality or fish stocks which is the apparent reason they did it. Simple physics dictates that the river upstream will flow at exactly the same speed, its just that it now has a few hundred metres less distance to go.
Hopefully the cut fills up with sand quickly.
