Cliff works rethought Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au
Hotly contested: Both Labor and Liberal state parties have been piling on election promises in the marginal seat of Frankston. Picture: Gary Sissons
PSOs for âcrime hotspotâ station Brodie Cowburn brodie@baysidenews.com.au THE Victorian coalition have made an election promise to expand the Protective Services Officers program to provide additional PSOs to Frankston and Mordialloc train stations between 10am and 6pm. Up to 20 stations identified as âdaytime crime hotspotsâ will receive 100 additional transit PSOs on a new dayshift roster if the Liberal Nationals win the November state
election. âA Liberal Nationals Government will make Victoria safer. We are going to put more police on the beat and more PSOs at train stations. If we are going to encourage more people to use more public transport then we need to make sure users are safe and feel safe,â Leader of the opposition Matthew Guy MP said. Frankston Liberal candidate Michael Lamb, a Police Senior Sergeant, said that he has âdedicated my entire career to keeping people safe and locking away criminals and
I am passionate about our community, which is why Iâm fighting hard to get more local funding for frontline police and PSOs.â Frankston has been a political battleground recently, with a number of election promises made in the last week aiming to swing voters. The Premier, leader of the opposition, and Prime Minister have visited the region in the last two weeks. The seat of Frankston is one of the most marginal in the state, and was decided by just 336 votes at the last state election.
UNEXPECTED erosion has caused delays and a change in engineersâ plans to protect crumbling cliffs at Mt Martha North beach. The use of a geotextile sand tube was abandoned after several storms in June and July. Instead, the wall designed to prevent further erosion at the base of the cliff will be built solely using geotextile blankets and rocks. Sand will still be imported from the beach north of the Balcombe Estuary âto top up the beach and inhibit undermining of the [cliff] toeâ, according to the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Beach box owners have been told the beach is closed and they cannot repair their property - on Crown Land leased through Mornington Peninsula Shire while the cliff works are underway. Many of the beach boxes are either sagging or leaning and some have stumps that are hanging above ground. Several have been demolished. However, the $880,000 works currently underway and expected to be completed this month, are only seen as a temporary solution to erosion problems at the beach. Consultants Water Technology has been hired to assess the four long term solutions identified in its 2017 report which warned that the continued erosion could eventually effect the Esplanade above Mt Martha North Beach (âBeach repairs could cost $4mâ The News 30/10/17). The report recommended removing
all boat sheds at Mt Martha north unless action was taken to stop further erosion of the cliff and beach. Options contained in the report include building rock walls and groynes across the beach or an offshore breakwater to slow the loss of thousands of cubic metres of sand needed to ârenourishâ the beach. âAn analysis of the four engineering recommendations will assess the environmental, social, technical and cost of each option, to determine which are the most feasible to model in detail,â the latest âstakeholder updateâ issued by the DELWP states. âFollowing a series of storms and persistent northerly and north-westerly winds in June and July, erosion on the beach was so severe that clay and bedrock were exposed. This resulted in an amendment to the design, because the geotextile sand tube could not be placed at the more southerly end as the sand would have washed away with the tides,â the update stated. âThis section has instead been constructed solely of rock and geotextile. It is possible that only rock will be encapsulated in the geotextile in the northerly section as well.â âTension cracksâ in the cliff had necessitated âemergency trimming of the cliff faceâ in late August. âThese cracks were deemed at risk of collapse during placement of the rocks if not manually removed. âTraditional Owner representatives were on site to inspect the removed material for cultural heritage values, but nothing of significance was identified. The works were completed under supervision of geotechnical engineers.â
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Frankston Times
17 September 2018
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