When it rains, it pours.
Sunday’s thunderstorms brought enough water to wash out four of Barrie’s beaches over the long weekend — Centennial Beach, Wilkins Beach, Dock Road and Tyndale Park and Beach — and this week city staffers are hard at work returning the beaches to their former state.
“This year is one of those super-humid summers that create those heavy thunderstorms. With massive amounts of rain and droughts in between, it doesn’t give the ground enough time to absorb it. The ground is like concrete, which creates a perfect flood scenario for us,” said Brett Mosley, foreperson of parks operations for the City of Barrie. “It definitely is something that has changed over the years with new construction. It changes the way the water flows.
“An area that wasn’t a problem five years ago could possibly be a problem now because the water will find its way,” he added.
According to Mosley, Wilkins Park and Beach was the worst hit by the storm. About 15 tandem loads of sand will be required to repair the site, as well as grooming.
“Wilkins Beach is a bit of a different one, because it has a creek along the side of the beach. When we have large rain flows, it overflows the creek,” Mosley told BarrieToday.
Going forward, Mosley said special attention will be paid to Wilkins Beach to monitor whether this will become a regularly occurring problem.
“It looks like the creek itself, which is a fishery area, it overflowed because of the amount of stormwater. We’re going to look at what we can do to improve drainage down there," he said.
Centennial Beach also saw storm damage, but was repaired by late Tuesday afternoon.
“There was a large washout at the middle of the beach near the boardwalk. Drainage runs under the boardwalk that unfortunately runs to the beach and when we get large rainfalls, washes it out,” said Mosley. “Staff took six tandem loads and five one-tonne dump truck loads (of sand) to fix the washout that was there.”
Mosley said Centennial Beach’s washout is mostly due to construction of the boardwalk and other features added over the past three years.
“Drainage runs under the boardwalk, which washes out the beach. It’s one of those things we kind of live with for now until we can figure out a way to swale that water into the lake without taking the beach with it,” he said.
Dock Road will require four tandem loads of sand to repair erosion and Tyndale Park and Beach will only require one tandem load.
“We don’t normally have an issue with Dock Road,” he noted. “We do anticipate the beaches will wash out. We know we have trouble there and where the trouble areas are. We have managed to fix them over the years. Tyndale used to wash out a lot, but we built a large swale around the front of it to catch the water and redirect it away from the beach.”
Once all the sand is in place, Mosley said the beaches will all be groomed on Friday morning with a 'Beach Barber' before the beaches reopen for the weekend.
“It rakes the sand,” said Mosley. “We do have some regular washout on beaches; it’s the nature of the beast, but we have found over the years since we purchased the Beach Barber, it makes the sand fluffier so it can absorb more water, and then it typically doesn’t wash out like what we saw on Sunday.
"We got unlucky this time.”
While there is a cost associated with these kinds of repairs, Mosley said they will be minimal as staff wasn’t called in on overtime, and the sand costs roughly $45 per load.
“It’s kind of absorbed into our daily work. If staff weren’t doing that job, they’d be doing another job, so we just redirect resources based on where the problems are,” he said.
Crews are also inspecting the rest of the beaches and parks across the city for potential damages and will communicate any other closures.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this amount of washout at our beaches,” said Mosley. “This is definitely unusual. The amount of rain we got on Sunday was more than we’d seen in a while, and all at once.”
