Coastal Erosion Study - protection strategies at Holderness.

Starting with the first strategy implemented, the seawall at Bridlington. This 4.7km seawall cost the local area millions to protect the residential and commercial area, this is vitally important to protect homes and businesses that will suffer a loss from both the destruction of their building and the decrease in tourists visiting the area. Furthermore, in 1991, 450m of the coastline around Mappleton had to be protected at a cost of £2 million, and using over 61,000 tonnes of rocks. It involved two hard engineering strategies of rock armour to absorb the power of the waves and building rock groynes to prevent longshore drift meaning that the buffer zone for wave refraction to occur is maintained.

Despite all of the positive impacts; there are a considerable amount of downsides. For example, The Groynes to the north of Holderness are now being blamed for beach and sediment starvation further south along the coast that effects not only sensitive environments but also peoples’ businesses and property. This has caused conflict between the planners, locals and the environmentalists. Also, there has been a loss of land to the south of Mappleton causing farms and caravan parks around Great Cowden. In addition, the lifeguard station situated at Spurn Head is under increased erosion. A major issue throughout the entirety of the management plan has been to protect the integrity of the gas terminal at Easington, in 1999 1km of the coast had to be protected by rock armour costing £6.6 million, this is likely a result of the groynes further up the coast. Finally, the spit at Humber Estuary is being starved due to the groynes further north meaning that there was a loss of a habitat in the protected nature reserve.

To conclude, I believe that the plan has been mainly a success, as without these expensive methods of hard engineering the coast would continue to erode at an alarming rate