NEWCASTLE City Council plans to excavate parts of Stockton beach to remove dangerous rocks after a junior lifesaver was badly injured in a fall in September.
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Locals have been removing large, sharp rocks from the beach for sometime that are being uncovered by worsening erosion.
In late September, a volunteer junior lifesaver was badly injured and required surgery when he fell on a sharp rock disguised below the sand.
Locals believe some of the rocks are coming from a rockwall, that stretches 140 metres along the main entrance of the beach from the surf club to the caravan park, that was built as part of a $3 million beach restoration program by Newcastle council.
The construction was in response to extreme storm surges in June 2016 that stripped Stockton beach to a thin ribbon of sand and threatened the surf club. Following the accident council engaged an engineer to examine the wall and it was found to be stable and acting as intended.
Councils environment asset program coordinator Karenne Jurd said on Wednesday it was impossible to build a wall of its scale without having some shards of rock break off.
About 9000 cubic metres of rock was used to build the temporary seawall and its believed some of the smaller fragments are from a transfer station used to store the rock during construction.
But Ms Jurd said there were other rocks being uncovered by erosion not part of the wall that had been dumped on the coastal strip between the 1950s and 1990s.
Ms Jurd said a consultant had been engaged to provide advice on where and how deep to dig in front of the rockwall.
She said council workers were willing and able to excavate, but needed the right conditions extreme low tide and no swell - to get machinery on the beach. The sand would be sieved and rocks removed.
People need to understand the space they are coming to occupy, she said.
The beach is not broken. People need to work with what we have. Communities that live on the coast have to be adaptable and resilient.
Patrols are being conducted daily of the area between the flags to detect rocks.
Residents who collect rocks from the beach are urged to place them on the sand on the right-hand side of the walkway that heads towards Lexies on the Beach cafe.