Heads up to anyone heading to Augusta this summer to Kite. The river mouth has been opened a km or so back up at the Colour Patch, where it was about 20 odd years ago.

Might not affect the nice long butter flat runs this year but I'm sure it'll silt up over the coming seasons. hopefully the change has the desired affect of flushing and cleansing the inlet.

In answer to your Qu I have no Idea where the original "natural mouth" was

I know it's been dug out in the same place before, possibly back mid 60's/70s by a bunch of farmers before there was and EPA DEP CALM etc etc. the idea being to get more of a tidal flushing to wash out a lot od the silt and algal buildup. I think there is a lot less water running down the river these days as well which isn't helping.

That's going to be hard work to tack upwind through...

andrewm said...

Is this the 'new' rivermouth? did they actually close the natural one

No. My understanding is that the plan they settled on was to open a new mouth so there now should be two.

The original plan was to block up the current river mouth and re cut another one at the colourpatch. This option was going to be too expensive and put the town at risk of flooding. So they've now put the cut in at the colourpatch and kept the other opening.
The real problem lies upriver - the algae blooms are caused by phosphate run off from the farms. Based on previous experience, the cut will not improve water quality of the river.
What the cut has done is removed access to the 2 kms of sand spit and Jays beach, changed the wave at Jays beach and changed the conditions for kitesurfing. Its too early to say how the conditions will be affected. I think the river side of the cut will probably silt up over time.

I think the longer term plan is to stabilise the "new" cut and put a marina in

we had a similar issue back home where there were water quality issues. There was a mouth up the beach but some farmers dug another opening about 500m away. Few heavy rainfall periods, some big surf and 6 months later the sand spit that created the nice flat water was erroded away.

What numpties. Putting in the cut will have absolutely no impact on water quality or fish stocks which is the apparent reason they did it. Simple physics dictates that the river upstream will flow at exactly the same speed, its just that it now has a few hundred metres less distance to go.

Hopefully the cut fills up with sand quickly.