Buildings
and major projects - Oriental Bay Beach Project
Before - Oriental Bay
After
Before - Freyberg Beach
After - Freyberg Beach (top left of picture) and Oriental Bay beach
Summary
The Oriental Bay beach project required the purchase of 17,500 cubic metres of sand to replenish the Oriental Bay beach. A price premium was allowed for purchasing sand from a sustainable source.
Key drivers
The key driver to ensure that the sand was purchased from a sustainable source was council's recognition of the sustainability priorities of the local community. The beach has a high profile in the community and council wished to ensure that it minimised the environmental impacts associated with the project and communicated this to local residents. Sign posting, advertising in the local paper, and inclusion of project details in the Wellington City Council's Annual Plan ensured that the community remained informed.
Council specifically wanted to ensure a net sustainability benefit from the project, in other words, did not want to be seen as damaging another beach environment to improve their own beach.
Project detail
The factors to be considered when selecting the sand to be purchased were:
- The impact on the source environment so that the sand was not coming from a sensitive location such as a dune or beach.
- Ability to be replenished in future years ie. it had to come from a source that could potentially be used again.
- The suitability of the sand for Oriental Bay to cope with storm - strength winds and wind - driven currents.
- Had to satisfy cultural sensitivities at both the source of supply and at the point of deposition.
- Ability to meet engineering standards such as being uncontaminated, density, grain size, etc.
- Locations of source. Council decided to use sand from within the country despite the unfavourable cost differential, as it would have been less expensive to import a shipload of white silica sand from Australia.
The procurement process began two years prior to the delivery of the sand. To locate a suitable source of sand council contacted thirty potential suppliers with the sand engineering specifications and the criteria that the source environment would not be damaged by extraction. Most sources were found not to comply with the engineering specifications and a short list was created. Finally, a site was selected and the process for resource consent to remove the sand was completed.
The sand came from a location where the local district council wanted a large, potentially unstable, roadside batter removed in a controlled manner before it collapsed onto the road beneath. The replenished beach enhanced the aesthetic and recreational value of Oriental Bay without damage to another environment and provided a solution to another council's environmental problem.
Key challenges
The key challenge for the council was to find a sand that would satisfy any potential environmental concerns, yet still meet the demanding engineering specifications, aesthetics (colour, ease on bare feet, etc.) and cost constraints.
By defining the environmental criteria, other key challenges then followed that may not have been present otherwise. For example, transporting the large quantity of sand from the inland location on one island, across Cook Strait to Oriental Bay. However, this significant logistical exercise was successfully completed without incident.
Outcomes of project
Placing the importance on the source of the sand, rather than the cost, resulted in a more sustainable outcome. Sand of the same engineering specifications would have had the same outcomes for Oriental Bay, however, ensuring that the source location was not negatively impacted meant that a positive outcome was also achieved for the district council with the need for a sandbank to be removed.
The project has been awarded the top landscape award for New Zealand by winning the 2004 George Malcolm Supreme Award for Urban Design by the Institute of Landscape Architects, a significant portion of which relates to the sand as the dominant surface. The project also gained a second award, the 2004 New Zealand Institute of Architects' Award in the Urban Design category.
