[thistleclub]

Eroding dreams on the shore near Stoney Creek
(Hamilton Spectator, Jeff Mahoney, April 29 2013)

In a way it’s worse than buying that proverbial swampland in Florida.

You can drain swampland.

But what’s happening in the Cherry Beach area of Stoney Creek, on the lakeshore near Millen Road, is like buying up property in the old city of Atlantis after it’s been submerged.

You can’t drain Lake Ontario.

Realtor Steve Ribaric takes me out to the “beach.”

He points out to the lapping of the lake immediately beyond us. Buildings used to stand there. People lived there.

The lot plan map says there are lots where he points. There should be. The city paid for them. But there aren’t. The de facto zoning? H2O.

All that property, once the playground of cottagers, is literally underwater, a big scoop taken out of the shoreline.

Soil erosion. Steve says we lose four feet of shoreline a year.

“The point from the original beachfront to the new, is well over 30 feet. In the last storm alone, at least four feet lost. There’s absolutely no protection.”

“It (the rate of beach erosion) is two to three feet a year, but he’s in the ballpark,” admits Steve Barnhart, manager of landscape architectural services for Hamilton’s public works department.

It’s a matter of “the position on the lake of that piece of shoreline and its exposure to wind and wave action and the material the shore is made of.”

The waste of tax money represented by the submerged property, acquired over the years to position the area for conversion to parkland, is one thing, says Steve the realtor.

But the erosion of the city property is compromising his client’s own efforts to keep back the lake. He represents the owner of a strip of land that runs between Cherry Beach Road and the shore, sandwiched between city-owned lots.

The client’s property, at the shoreline, is fortified by massive heaps of boulders and rocks and other materials piled up as a breakwater.

But beside his barrier, on city land? Nothing. The waves have their way.

“My client is about to lose his breakwall, and his house will be next,” says Steve the realtor. “They (city hall) are unresponsive, and he (the client) would like them to either put up breakwall protection or buy him out.”