Sand Bypassing the Tweed River: Insights into Coastal, Approval and Procurement Processes

An ebb tidal delta forms at the entrance to the Tweed River, and navigation conditions have never been good. While entrance training wall extensions built in the 1960s improved navigation conditions for a time, they interrupted the littoral drift of sand to the north and contributed to erosion problems experienced at the beaches of the Gold Coast. The paper describes coastal processes at the site, and approval and procurement procedures used in respect of a project set up by the New South Wales and Queensland Governments to improve navigation conditions and to nourish the southern Gold Coast beaches by bypassing sand around the river entrance. The initial dredging of 3 million cubic metres of sand from the entrance and its placement in the beach system to the north resulted in a major improvement to the southern Gold Coast beaches and an overall, but variable, improvement to the navigation conditions.