Sea defence work will helpprotect the Rye coastline

Vital work is taking place to improve sea defences along the Rye coastline.
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Visitors to Rye Harbour will have noticed a large vessel floating about two miles off-shore in Rye Bay.

It has been part of the scenery for weeks and destined to become a familiar sight for the next 12 months or so.

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The large hulk is a shallow draft, engineless, sea-going barge, relying on the tug Cefni to move it around Rye Bay,.

For the past six weeks the pair have been carrying out operations with a crew of four or five out in Rye Bay. It is accompanied by it’s tug the Afon Cefni. from Holyhead.

The barge is named Charlie Rock and is used to carry heavy rock armouring to the shore at Broomhill, where the sea defences are being strengthened to prepare the coast for the now famous, ”one in 200 years event”, predicted by the Environment Agency.

Rock armouring is placed at the foot of sea defences to take the sting out of the constant thrashing that the tides bring.

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Charlie is waiting for its mother ship, bringing more rocks from Norway, before it can continue its task of building up the defences at Broomhill.

The round trip for this other barge, the enormous Stema, takes about five weeks.

When it arrives Rye Bay will again become a hive of activity with Charlie being loaded with about 1,500 tonnes of rock at a time and driven on to the shore at Broomhill where the rock will be dumped, ready for the excavators to place the rocks against the sea wall.

This will happen at almost every high tide until Stema is empty and returns to Norway for another load.

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It will take about a year of journeys backwards and forwards to Norway, before the full amount of rock, envisaged to be 260,000 tonnes in total, is in place.

Local residents who are concerned that these deliveries will cause disturbance to their sleep or their leisure time at the weekends may rest assured, for the Environment Agency has undertaken not to work on the scheme above the high tide line outside of the hours of 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday and 8am to 1pm on Saturdays.

There will be no construction work on Sundays and Bank holidays.

One thousand homes in Rye are still reliant on flood defences to protect them from disaster says Rye emergency action group REACT.

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The group’s chairman Anthony Kimber said, at a public meeting last year: He said: “Low level flooding remains one of the main issues with 1,000 homes below the level of high spring tides and totally reliant on sea walls and river flaps to prevent them from flooding.

“Rye is a maze of underground and overground waterways and we in the process of forging better relations with Southern Water over Rye’s creaking sewage system.

“Where REACT really comes into its own is in pulling together with the 12 or so professional groups involved in protecting Rye from flooding.”

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