blogTO Recent Comments: Shrapnel Spit Reinforcing Islands' Erosion

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Noel G

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:20:58 PDT

Actually, if you look at the history of the islands the spit was placed as a breakwater for shipping traffic. The Islands weren't constantly 'hammered' but rather, as this article states was subject to an ongoing natural erosion which was counteracted by the migration of the bluffs sediment. The hammering to which you are referring could be the storm of April 4 1958 which broke through a thin naturally occurring barrier of land that turned the area from a peninsula to what is now the islands. Incidentally the naturally existing spit was actually a thin barrier of land that surrounded a large marsh. This particular configuration still allowed the flow of sediment. It wasn't until the marsh filled in that the flow of sediment began to wane. The marsh would also have provided a better habitat for not only birds but many other species of wildlife than in it's current configuration. So I'm not sure which history you are referring to because the peninsula/islands were created from sediment eroded from the bluffs, which were created by the last ice age. Essentially the spit project is undoing 15,000 years of natural sediment deposition.

but also

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 22:42:41 PDT

if you look at the history of the islands, they were getting hammered regularly by winter storms that flooded nearly the entire place, and stood poised to wash it away -- which is pretty much why the spit was placed where it was in the first place, definitely not at random. it's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing.

on maps of the islands since settlers showed up.. it's pretty clear that the idea of a stable island is a bit of anomaly, since it is pretty much a sandbar

SusanA

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:29:49 PDT

This is really distressing news, isn't it?

I thought the spit was actually being engineered to be a bird estuary, which is a good thing. But it seems like we should be able to blast a hole in the middle of it and put a bridge over it (in the spit) to let the sediment through.

Otherwise, in 50 years the spit will have all the sand?

This city just can't seem to get things right... so frustrating. I'm still ticked at John Tory for not winning the election. Toronto needs more than good hair...

Mark Dowling

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:07:14 PDT

Maybe when the Sorbara Subway to Nowhere gets built, the tunnelled earth could be used to replace what was lost on the islands.

brokenengine

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:39:28 PDT

How about dumping the construction waste on the island instead of the spit?

Oh, wait...