REPAIRS worth half a million pounds are urgently required at Lossiemouth in the aftermath of the community’s battering by “the perfect storm”.
Councillors will this month be asked to give the green light to a £500,000 project to repair a collapsed section of the harbour wall.
Bringing the protective barrier back to full strength will cost about £400,000, while the remaining cash will be used for repairs to the Station Park area.
Temporary measures were put in place in the days following the mid-December onslaught, which saw harbour-front homes evacuated as heavy seas pounded the community.
Boulders thrown up by the sea smashed the windows of seafront properties and littered the sea front, as water surged in when a 15-metre section of the wall came crashing down.
“We were two sandbags away from water getting into Seatown,” Lossie Community Council member Jim Dartnall told the group’s monthly meeting on Tuesday evening.
As the waters receded, concrete blocks taken from Elgin’s flood prevention scheme were used to plug the gap in the harbour wall temporarily.
Moray Council leader, Councillor Allan Wright, told community council members that a lasting solution is now sought, with proposals expected to go before a meeting of the full council later this month. “On January 30, there will be a paper to the full council, seeking backing for about £500,000 of funding,” he said.
“Clearly the priority is to get the wall back in place, closely followed by the playpark area, because we will be into the tourist season before too long. The plan will be to replace the wall in as strong a state as it was before.”
Bill McLean asked that displaced flagstones along the Esplanade should also be replaced. And a plea for council engineers fully to assess damage to the breakwater – an important part of the town’s defences – will be passed on by Councillor Wright, who represents Heldon and Laich.
Mr McLean said he was heartened by the willingness of council staff to get “stuck in”, both during the worst of the weather and in its aftermath. Tribute was also paid to local residents who carried out a clean-up operation.
