STOP THE DAM
Kings Beach – Let the salt be 🌊
This is our statement as agreed by the group. Please feel free to share it.
STOP THE DAM – KINGS BEACH
Statement from the coalition
We acknowledge the Arakwal people of the Bundjalung nation as the traditional custodians of this land and sea country and pay our respects to elders past and present.
Hi everyone. A lot of people have been messaging asking what our position actually is so we've tried to put it all in one place. This has been written by a few of us so apologies if it jumps around a bit.
Firstly we are NOT saying there isn't salt at Kings. There is obviously salt at Kings. Anyone who has been down there knows you come out of the water and you're covered in it and it's in your hair for days. Some of the people in our group who have been swimming there for 20+ years feel like it's gotten worse, others aren't sure. We had a long discussion about this at the first meeting and we didn't really come to an agreement which is fine. What we did agree on is that putting a giant concrete wall across the beach is not the way to deal with it, and that nobody has actually explained to us properly where the salt is coming from or why it's suddenly such an urgent issue now.
We've asked Dam Kings Beach a few times now if they have done any actual testing of the salt (like is it the same as the salt in the ocean or is it different salt?) and have not had a response.
One thing that came up that a lot of people hadn't thought about is if you block the salt with a wall it doesn't just go away. It's still there. It would just build up behind the wall in the sand and the dunes and possibly get into the groundwater. Then what happens in a flood? Someone at the meeting who used to work in engineering said it would basically be like a salt reservoir and if that wall ever failed you would have years of salt going into the ocean in one go. We think that's a pretty big thing to not have considered.
There are also lots of more gentle approaches that haven't even been looked at. These came up at the meeting and are just ideas at this stage, we're not experts:
- planting natives that absorb salt along the dunes (saltbush, pigface, samphire etc). Plants have been dealing with salt for a lot longer than us
- seaweed. A couple of people feel strongly that seaweed already regulates the salt naturally and has been doing so forever, and we should be protecting the seaweed, not walling it off
- collecting the salt instead of blocking it. People have hand harvested sea salt for thousands of years in places like France and Portugal. Some kind of small community salt harvesting at the top of the beach could take some of it out before it gets to the water and could even be sold at the markets to fund dune care
- one of our members works with mycelium and thinks it might be able to slow salt moving through the sand. Worth a trial at least?
We also just want to gently say that a lot of older cultures lived next to the ocean and the salt for a very long time without needing to build a dam. We're not going to pretend we know how, and we definitely don't want to speak for anyone, but maybe that should tell us something.
The other stuff, which most people already know about but just to have it written down. There has been zero consultation. No info sessions, nothing from council, nothing published. The size of the thing in the pictures is honestly frightening. Kings is a beautiful wild beach and a lot of us go there to get away from exactly this kind of thing. There's turtles, shorebirds and the oystercatchers that have been nesting up the northern end, and nobody knows what changing the salt levels would do to any of them. Kings has also always been a quiet clothing optional beach and a wall with "designated access points" would pretty much be the end of that.
We also need to talk about Cham's. Cham's Small Meats & Preservatives is openly funding Dam Kings Beach. We have nothing against Cham personally and he seems like a nice man. But Cham's literally sells salt-based curing products and preservatives in bulk on their website, so we think it's fair to ask why a company that makes money from salt is so interested in controlling where the salt goes at our beach. He has also said himself in his statement that he doesn't understand the proposal. We're not accusing anyone of anything, we just think people should be aware.
What we're asking for:
1. pause the whole thing
2. independent testing of the salt at Kings, made public, explained in normal language
3. a proper community forum about the salt before anything is decided
4. let the community trial the natural options first (we were thinking a couple of years)
5. Cham's to be upfront about how much they've put in and why
What you can do:
Sign the petition (QR code on the posters, or link in comments)
Write to council and the Echo. Please be respectful, there have been some comments on the Dam Kings Beach page that aren't helping anyone
Come down to Kings for the full moon gathering. Bring water, a hat, kids, instruments, whatever. A few people suggested bringing a small jar to take some salt home so you can observe it yourself over a few weeks. We think that's a lovely idea
If you swim at Kings please start noticing the salt. Write down how it feels. We're putting together a community observation log and every bit helps
We know everyone is exhausted after Wallum and the floods and everything else but please don't let this one slide.
Let the salt be 🌊
Stop the Dam – Kings Beach
(volunteer run, not affiliated with any political party)
Kings a long time ago. Still no wall.