BLAIRGOWRIE Yacht Squadron Rear Commodore Brian Smith blames an "extraordinary number of extreme weather events" for the damage to the floating pontoons that form part of the marina's wave protection system.
The Mail reported exclusively last week that huge pontoons had been breaking up since at least early October, releasing millions of polystyrene beads into the water. They have been washed up onto beaches as far as Safety Beach, 15 kilometres east. Mr Smith told The Mail winter storms had been "particularly bad".
"In recent weeks there have been four or five storms with winds in excess of 50 knots. There have been eight or 10 once-in-50-year storms in the past four or five years," he said.
"When you get strong winds from the north, you get a big build-up of water. For four or five weeks we have been unable to perform maintenance on the [wave] attentuators [pontoons] because the weather has been too wild."
Last Tuesday the yacht club removed two of the most damaged giant pontoons, which are made of polystyrene-filled concrete. They were installed when the marina was built in 2002 and designed to allow water to naturally flow onto Blairgowrie beaches rather than crash up against solid walls that are used at many marinas around Australia.
Mr Smith said that when the club realised the pontoons were badly breaking up, "we stopped everything; we spared no expense to get our beach clean. It's just so beautiful."
He said the club hired a beach cleaner from City of Kingston (which has beaches from Carrum to Mentone), had people using quad bikes with vacuums, had the foreshore committee and volunteers helping clean up the beads and met the Environment Protection Authority.
"We've tried our darndest. You have to look reasonably hard to see the small bits of foam among the sand."
Mr Smith said the EPA told him the polystyrene was non-toxic and would break down with exposure to sunlight over the next 12 months.
Southern peninsula beach walkers have been collecting the beads and larger chunks and dumping them in rubbish bins.
Mr Smith said the recent stormy weather "brings home climate change".
"I'm happy to go on the record as a sceptic about the cause of climate change, but I think it is happening.
"Things have got worse down there [on Port Phillip]. I've been sailing there for 10 years."
He said there had been "massive changes" in average inflows to Port Phillip since 1999.
The yacht club is planning to extend its marina and replace the wave attenuator with a fixed wave screen (sea wall).
Plans are in development and the club is seeking expressions of interest for the purchase of berths, which would finance the project.
Mr Smith said there had been about 60 expressions of interest in purchasing a berth in an expanded marina.
Existing berths are changing hands for about $100,000. This includes a 21-year licence for the berth and there are also annual body corporate-type fees.
The marina has 170 berths, 90 per cent of which are owned by yacht club members.
The EPA's media liaison officer Ruth Ward said the clean up was ongoing and the EPA was monitoring the situation.
She said officers had conducted a 10-kilometre walk along beaches last Friday and had advised the yacht club to continue its efforts "until we are satisfied".
Environment Minister Gavin Jennings on Thursday will
visit a company at Geelong North, GDP industries, which recycles polystyrene foam, known as expanded polystyrene or EPS.
He said it caused havoc at recycling plants and took up valuable space in landfill.
"EPS needs special machines to reprocess and although there are depots in metro areas, an annual national plastics recycling survey showed that in 2007, only 6per cent of EPS was recycled in Australia."
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