Douglas stinky beach

[Non-Believer]

Just to give an analogy (volumes notwithstanding)...if a neighbour's cat shit in your garden and the shit was stinking to an unbearable point; would you just move it round the garden a bit or would you do something to remove it altogether, (until the next time the cat dumped)?

[Shake me up Judy]

It may be tiresome but in ten pages I've still not read the answer to why the seaweed is moved around the beach at great expense to the ratepayers of Douglas and why it isn't removed ?  I notice you, for all your deflection, didn't answer it either. 

[WTF]

39 minutes ago, The Bastard said:

 

What's on the beach is rotting seaweed, not sewage. Sewage isn't routinely discharged at Douglas unless the holding tanks are overspilled by heavy rain, which doesn't happen in a dry week in summer.

 

when i was staying in douglas a few years ago the prom got walked or cycled most evenings, a study of the seaweed clumps towards derby castle would often result if half composted jobbies mixed in with it , on occasions it looked like ben grimm from the fantastic 4 had been turned into a jigsaw and scattered around.  if you think anyone will ever admit sewage is getting pumped out you're barking mad.

[Non-Believer]

31 minutes ago, Shake me up Judy said:

It may be tiresome but in ten pages I've still not read the answer to why the seaweed is moved around the beach at great expense to the ratepayers of Douglas and why it isn't removed ?  I notice you, for all your deflection, didn't answer it either. 

A question best bounced off @Amadeuswho said it was a subject of concern to him at the time he was elected and stated on these boards that it was something he intended to look into.

I wonder if DCC are locked into a contract they can't terminate or alter? And who is that contract with now, if it's not a DCC employee and tractor doing the shifting? Is it a mate of somebody in DCC? Because it's money wasted that could be directed into moving the stuff away.

If there's an old Quarry at Turkeylands that we intend to dump marina silt into, a bit of seaweed in there won't make a big lot of difference, surely?

[Shake me up Judy]

They dumped hundreds of tons of toxic silt from Peel Marina at Poortown Quarry too.

[The Bastard]

1 hour ago, Shake me up Judy said:

It may be tiresome but in ten pages I've still not read the answer to why the seaweed is moved around the beach at great expense to the ratepayers of Douglas and why it isn't removed ?  I notice you, for all your deflection, didn't answer it either. 

There's nothing to be done with it. Nobody wants it spread on the fields, since it's not 1820, and you can get commercial fertilizer that doesn't involve spreading a load of slow-decomposing, salty, plastic-filled waste on your land. You can't incinerate it because of its high water content, and drying it to the point where it would burn is uneconomic. It's not the right mix of species for food use, or for fermentation, since the gas production would be too low. You can't bring it onshore because over time it would grow into a huge pile of rotten seaweed that the NIMBYs would grumble about endlessly on the Mannin Line. Presumably you probably can't process it and dump it at sea because that's probably counted as marine dumping, which is deeply frowned-upon - see the problem with dumping silt at Peel.

It's a problem of our own making. The seaweed is thriving because of the huge volumes of nitrates and other plant nutrients that we're discharging into the ocean, including run-off from farms and gardens that ends up in rivers, industrial waste, dog waste on streets and beaches, and sewage discharge elsewhere. Rising global temperatures and increased atmospheric Carbon Dioxide both increase the rate of plant growth. Interfering with the hydrology of river mouths, and scraping the sea bottom repeatedly with trawl nets leads to broken tidal systems and overgrowth of opportunistic species. 

On top of this we've chosen to make a town on the rear section of a beach in a shallow bay where the sea level is steadily rising. 

If you want a solution, then you need a better one than pushing it around and expecting it to disappear. The causes need to be looked at, with some more innovative thinking that doesn't just involve bulldozers.

Edited May 29, 2023 by The Bastard

[Ativa]

47 minutes ago, WTF said:

when i was staying in douglas a few years ago the prom got walked or cycled most evenings, a study of the seaweed clumps towards derby castle would often result if half composted jobbies mixed in with it , on occasions it looked like ben grimm from the fantastic 4 had been turned into a jigsaw and scattered around.  if you think anyone will ever admit sewage is getting pumped out you're barking mad.

Are you suggesting they are pumping raw sewage into Douglas bay?

In 50 years I have never seen hobbies on the beach.  Ever

[Ativa]

Surely putting it in piles like they have at the moment makes the issue worse?

Its going to take ages for a big pile of the stuff to rot away or get washed away.

Surely if you do want to move it, just shifting it in a thin layer back to the low tide line is a better bet?

[Broadcasterman]

3 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

A question best bounced off @Amadeuswho said it was a subject of concern to him at the time he was elected and stated on these boards that it was something he intended to look into.

Odd as nothing at all seems to have been done about it. It’s a shame that you can’t post a smell up on social media for people to comment on it. 

[Numbnuts]

2 hours ago, Ativa said:

Are you suggesting they are pumping raw sewage into Douglas bay?

In 50 years I have never seen hobbies on the beach.  Ever

Taking thats a typo. Hobbies. Well I have years ago I would often swin across the bay and once you got near to Port Jack there were loads of them. That’s why I stopped doing it. And wasn’t it found a few years ago pre Iris that a discharge pipe around that area had been leaking for many years .

[ian rush]

Aside from what The Bastard says, which makes some sense, how much of the problem with the beach these days is as a consequence of the Breakwater? All those old pics make it seem fine for seaweed (leaving aside the raw sewage). Has it changed the tidal flows and natural scouring?

[finlo]

If it's only seaweed that's stinking how come it's only around the bottom of Broadway and not in its entirety?

[Dr Beeching]

1 minute ago, finlo said:

If it's only seaweed that's stinking how come it's only around the bottom of Broadway and not in its entirety?

There's been a flock of gulls there almost constantly the last couple of weeks. Not usually there. 

[Roger Mexico]

11 minutes ago, offshoremanxman said:

Funnily enough I Googled seaweed and Douglas Beach and came up with this gem from 6 years ago. So what happened? 

As ever you need to go to the actual article to find out, rather than the misleading headline.  They were already beach 'cleaning' all year round, what was actually decided was to do so only when seaweed levels required it.

This isn't a new topic though, here's a Manx Forums discussion from 2004.  With people saying more or less the same about the 'new' breakwater.  Of course kelp has been washing up on Douglas Beach for ever, though maybe climate change will make it worse as more frequent and more violent storms dislodge more from the seabed.

[Lilly]

I daily walk Douglas beach from one end to the other, it's like an obstacle  course at the moment, I actually have to wear Brasher boots to navigate it. 

I meet many people daily during my walk and l have never heard such poor comments regarding Douglas Borough Council, are they responsible for the beach?  what is to be done about it ? If anything.  I feel like holding some of my rates back this year in protest of the poor maintenance, but would l be justified in doing so? 

Lilly