Sand Carting

The Hon. S.G. WADE (14:26): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation questions in relation to sand carting.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Last week saw the resumption of the use of heavy machinery to move sand along Adelaide's metropolitan beaches. Local residents, beachgoers and environmentalists have raised concerns that the use of trucks and excavators on those beaches is dangerous, polluting and expensive. Further, many people have been under the impression that when the government's $23 million sand pumping pipeline was completed in 2013—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Go ahead, the Hon. Mr Wade.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Thanks, Mr President. Further, many people have been under the impression that when the government's $23 million sand pumping pipeline was completed in 2013, the use of trucks and excavators would be a thing of the past. I am advised that all documentation produced by the environment department over several years indicates the use of heavy machinery will be limited to metropolitan beaches immediately surrounding Tennyson, Semaphore and West Beach. Sand erosion on Adelaide's metropolitan coastline has been a longstanding problem; however, the sand pumping pipeline appears to be unable to fulfil its initial aims of eliminating the use of trucks south of Glenelg. My questions to the minister are:

1. Can the minister explain why sand carting trucks have returned to Adelaide's beaches?

2. Does the return of heavy machinery demonstrate that the $23 million sand pumping pipeline built in 2013 has been underengineered and overspruiked?

3. Did the environment department undertake modelling to determine whether or not the pipeline had the capacity to replenish beaches, even in the event of storms occurring?

4. How much does the sand pumping pipeline cost to operate annually?

5. What is the estimated cost of the use of trucks and excavators to move sand during the winter of 2017?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:29): I thank the honourable member for his most important question, although I advise him not to listen to his shadow on informative matters about these issues of the environment, and certainly the coast, because he hasn't got the first clue. When you put in place a program to cart sand through pipelines that only traverse about a third of the distance that we actually truck sand, of course you are going to have trucks continuing to truck sand to the beach.

The pipe itself is designed to take sand along about eight to nine kilometres of a beachfront three times that size. So, it was never going to remove trucks; it was always designed to reduce the number of trucks. This is the looney tunes you get from the opposition. They take a good policy and they twist it because they don't understand the first part of it. The whole process of putting in pipes to mix sand and sea water and create a slurry to pump it along the beaches was to reduce the number of trucks that are actually going along the coastline, not to remove them completely, and it is an absolute furphy for anyone to suggest that was ever promulgated as being the reason for introducing the pipes in the first place.

The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Ms Lensink, learn not to talk with your mouth full, please.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: So, at the very first hurdle all of the questions the Hon. Mr Wade relays to us through the council in his question that have been passed on from the shadow in the other place fall. They fall because they do not understand the whole basis of the process of Adelaide's Living Beaches strategy about keeping sand on Adelaide's beaches and reducing the amount of sand carting that was required.

The Sand Transfer Infrastructure project is a component of the strategy involving permanent pipelines and pumping stations constructed along two sections of Adelaide's coastline to manage the movement of sand. The sand is now recycled more efficiently within management cells along our coastline. Other important aspects of the strategy include the integration of sand bypassing at harbours with beach management, the construction of coastal structures in critical locations and the addition of coarse sand from external sources.

The total capital cost of the Adelaide Living Beaches strategy, I am advised, is about $25.7 million, including expenditure on the Semaphore Park offshore breakwater, completed in 2009-10. The capital cost of the Sand Transfer Infrastructure project was $23 million, I am advised. The operational costs of implementing the Adelaide Living Beaches strategy are in the order of about $5.8 million per year. This includes the cost of pumping and trucking sand, dredging of Glenelg and West Beach harbours and costs.

I am advised that sand recycling is done each year—of course it is—with sand pumping occurring at West Beach for three to four months over autumn and winter and then at Glenelg for three to four months over winter and spring. This scheduling is designed to minimise the impact that these essential operations have on the public's enjoyment of our beautiful beaches. The whole idea of pumping sand mixed with sea water to form a slurry through pipes, as I said, was to reduce the number of trucks traversing the beaches that the public use. It was never to replace them. It could not ever have been designed to replace them, not in a cost efficient way, anyway. And no-one said it did. It was always about reducing the trucking.

The honourable member opposite relaying without any critical thought the questions from the lower house shadow opposition member is just an example to him of being very, very careful of what that person passes up to him. His lack of understanding is understandable. The Hon. Mr Wade should be a little bit more critical in asking some questions about the questions he was being asked to ask of me.

The Adelaide Living Beaches strategy 2005-2025 is the South Australian government's long-term strategy for managing Adelaide's beaches. An important part of the strategy involves collecting sand from areas where it builds up—obviously—and using this sand to replenish areas of erosion. In accordance with the strategy, beach replenishment operations are occurring at West Beach in May and June of 2017. I am advised that the firm McConnell Dowell constructions is undertaking this work as part of a long-term contract.

Sand is being collected from the River Torrens outlet area and shifted by trucks along the beach to the Adelaide Shores dunes between the Adelaide Shores boat harbour and the West Beach Surf Life Saving Club. Trucks are moving sand instead of the sand pumping system that has been used in recent years. This has been an issue when we had that huge build-up of seagrass wrack at the Adelaide Shores harbour following the big storms in 2016.

Ultimately, if you are trying to make a slurry of sand and sea water, you can't do that with a resource that is choked up with seagrass wrack. It is a good reason to leave seagrass on the shore, of course; you want it to infiltrate into the sand, because in itself it is an important environment, I suppose, for the small critters that live on it and feed birds and other animal life. More importantly, physically by intertwining itself with the sand and becoming part of the structure of the beach, it absorbs the wave energy as it crashes onto the beach and holds down the sand loss. The more seagrass you leave on the beach to become covered by sand, the stronger and more resilient the beach will be when it is attacked by wave energy with winter storms.

The seawater intake for the sand pumping system is located in the Adelaide Shores harbour and, as I said, the seagrass rack could have caused damage to the pumping equipment. The sand carting work is expected to take approximately four to six weeks, I am advised, subject to weather conditions, and the use of trucks instead of the sand pumping system, of course, is evidence that we are very, very flexible in how we manage our Adelaide's Living Beaches strategy.

Coastal conditions can be very variable from year to year—that is something that I think we all recognise. The Living Beaches strategy therefore adopts this flexibility and approach to coastal management. We utilise the tactics that we have at hand and the strategy in the most cost-effective way we possibly can on behalf of our taxpayers.

Both sand pumping and sand trucking will be used to manage the movement of sand along Adelaide's beaches into the future. I can say again that, whilst I can understand the member in the lower house not understanding this, I find it pretty offensive that in fact he would then try to utilise his ignorance for political advantage because it just shows—

The Hon. K.J. Maher: You've got to let them have something.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: They don't do their homework, Mr President. To then go on and confuse the public with baseless and inaccurate claims is a repudiation of the responsibility of being a shadow spokesperson and woe betide the state if they get into government.