A new report has found Warrnambool's breakwater is in urgent need of repair. KATRINA LOVELL reports on the plan to save the 128-year-old structure.
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Warrnambool’s ageing breakwater is in urgent need of protection with the city council unveiling a $7 million plan to extend the rock armouring along the entire length of the structure.
After years of neglect, the 128-year-old structure has deteriorated so much that works would need to be carried out within the next few years, according to a new report.
The draft Port of Warrnambool Asset Management Plan, which will be released for public feedback at the council’s October meeting, recommends works to secure the future of the iconic seawall should include extending the rock armouring along the structure by 400 metres.
Director of city infrastructure Scott Cavanagh said: “The plan has shown that it’s quite urgent.”
The consequences of failing to take action could be major, such as the collapse of part of the breakwater, the report says. But there is no need to panic with the report also stating the breakwater appeared to be stable and there was no timeframe in which stability could be compromised.
“We’re certainly not saying ‘imminent danger, people should be worried’. It’s not like that,” Mr Cavanagh said.
“It’s not imminently dangerous, but it’s certainly at risk if we don’t look to address the rock armouring and protect the breakwater.
“Any structure that gets to that age needs work. Unfortunately over a long period of time we’ve neglected spending what we need to on it.”
The report says that work on a rock armouring needed to start within two years. “It’s certainly not something that we can leave for too long,” Mr Cavanagh said. “There’s a number of pretty big holes under it. There’s some quite significant cracking at the end of the breakwater and some rotation.”
With an estimated works bill of between $5 million and $7 million, the rock armouring would involve using a crane to place up to 90,000 tonnes of one metre by 1.5 metre boulders into the ocean side of the breakwater, one at a time.
The project, which could take about nine months to complete, would reduce the wave impact on the breakwater itself. “Certainly big wave events will still come over the top. It takes the energy away from them and dissipates through the rock armouring effectively,” Mr Cavanagh said. “It means the face of the breakwater, the concrete, the grout and everything else is not getting the full force of the ocean waves.
“What’s effectively happened is there’s a rock shelf at one end of the breakwater, there’s the existing armouring at the other end and it’s intensified the energy into the centre of the breakwater and that’s where we’ve seen the most deterioration.”
The project could also mean fishing off the ocean side of the breakwater would no longer be possible.
An alternative of building a rock breakwater further south of the breakwater was ruled out because it would be less effective than the rock armouring and could damage the reef.
$7 million needed to shore up sea wall
Pressure is on the State Government to hand over the bulk of the $7m needed to secure Warrnambool’s deteriorating breakwater, and soon.
Talks beween council and government are already under way after the draft Port of Warrnambool Asset Management plan recommended urgent works to extend the rock armouring along the breakwater.
The council’s director of city infrastructure Scott Cavanagh said the breakwater was a state asset which the council managed on behalf of the government.
“We know we need the money in the next few years, which means we need to start the planning process, the community engagement,” he said.
“We need to invest as a community and the state government needs to assist us, as the asset owner, to invest in the breakwater and make sure it’s here for future generations. We would be looking to the state government to provide the bulk of the funding.”
Mr Cavanagh said the project would be an “extremely complex project to deliver”.
“We’ve got really only a few years to get serious about doing the rock armouring. It’s not something we can leave for a decade. We need the governments to be looking seriously now. I think they’ve classed it as effectively an immediate works category.”
Another $1 million also needs to be spent on redecking, rerendering the walls, fixing piles that have rotted out, and some further examination of what’s under the breakwater. “We’ve cored holes in it previously and what the cored holes have shown previously is there are sections where the concrete’s in good condition, there’s sections where it is non-evident or it’s deteriorated to a large degree,” he said.
“One of the problems with the breakwater is we don’t know what’s happening under the deck. You can’t get in there, you can’t see it.”
He said parts of the breakwater had already been x-rayed, but they needed to do more.
Council is still monitoring the effectiveness of concrete repair work it carried out earlier this year on part of the breakwater’s wave deflector which had fallen off into the ocean decades ago.
The new report, which has been released to the harbour reference group in the last month, brings together 15 years of assessments on the breakwater.
It is separate to the harbour master plan which has identified safer boat launching facilities as a priority.
With $7 needed for the breakwater, $3 million for safer launching facilities and between $5 and $10 million for any enclosed harbour, Mr Cavanagh said costs were starting to add up. “We’ve got to be realistic about what the priorities are and how we progress through them in a reasonable way,” he said.
Grand plans railroaded by train travel
Warrnambool’s breakwater has had a stormy past and it’s construction probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for a decade-long fight from locals.
And after more than a century of neglect, and the ravages of time and tide, the breakwater is in urgent need of help. Plans for a breakwater were first drawn up in 1870 but they failed to secure any government funding.
By 1874 approval was given and preliminary work started on a breakwater but when the money ran out, the works stopped.
With a number of quick changes of government the “Warrnambool breakwater project was kicked from one government to another like a battered football,” according to Charles Sayers’ and Peter Yule’s book By These We Flourish.
Finally in 1879, eminent British harbour engineer Sir John Coode was asked to design a breakwater.
His first design of a 1800-feet-long structure was scaled back to 900-feet and construction finally began in 1884.
By the time 32 tons of concrete blocks were placed in the ocean to complete the structure in 1890, the railway had arrived in Warrnambool. Business to the port flourished but only at first.
With the structure causing major siltation of the bay, the breakwater was again extended in 1915.
In 1975, the rock armouring at the end of the breakwater was added but by 1979 another impact study was calling for the breakwater to be removed altogether.
In 1999 there were calls to extend the breakwater again, as well as construct a second curved breakwater across the harbour entrance to solve siltation problems.
According to Heritage Council Victoria, the breakwater is of historical significance to the state as one of the most important maritime engineering projects in Victoria in the late nineteenth century.
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