Gun Hill is about to disappear. Just like Rifle Hill in Little Bay, most of it its base is millions of years old of solid granite. It has protected the Carr’s Bay Basin for thousands of years. I hope they will leave at least 30 feet of the cliff side standing.
Rifle Hill in Little Bay cost $3 million to take down instead of the estimated $700,000. I hope we are not going to make the same mistake again as we did with Rifle Hill and the airport site at Geralds, where millions of dollars were spent unnecessarily, to cut out million years old granite, to be replaced with substandard, compacted material.,
What is sad, is that there is insufficient information available from an environmental impact study that would indicate the effects that the removal of Gun Hill will have on our coastline.
It is a pity that once again, as happened with the Gerald’s Airport, that Donor Agency deadlines are being used as an excuse to waste money. What is the point of removing the Hill, trucking and storing it, when it will not be needed for a whole year.
If we need to use up the EU money quickly, it could easily be used to put a submerged reef/Break water just outside the fishing boats anchored in the shadow of Rendezvous Bluff. This would render the whole of Little Bay and the existing jetty calm and useable in all weather and achieve the original purpose that we believe the EU funds were given for. A project with an already approved environmental impact study report, an affordable project that I understand does not meet the requirements of a potential foreign investor and has therefore been abandoned.
A comment on this post to an email group says: “…think I also heard the archaeologist talking about a very large gun battery (?) found on Gun Hill, which would have to be removed in a hurry to preserve it before they start.
I have been wondering if that hill served a purpose, protecting the bay, maybe acting as a partial breakwater. It does seem an awful waste of money to break it down, when already so much was spent on Little Bay. I think a hill is a natural thing that we have, so why spend money to remove it instead of using it and working around it?
