Coul Links opponents claim controversial golf course plan faces erosion threat
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Increasing erosion at Coul Links, near Embo, could seriously affect plans for a controversial golf course in the area, according to opponents.
Campaign group Not Coul say parts of the land where it is hoped to build a championship course, are now just metres from the sea and could be washed away before the project goes through the planning process.
Group leader Dr Tom Dargie said that work undertaken by Not Coul showed that part of the proposed course could slip into the sea by the time any planning inquiry is held.
“Not Coul maintains the planning application is already seriously affected by erosion making it impossible to construct the course in its planned form,” he said.
Highland Council’s North Planning Applications Committee granted golf course developers Communities for Coul (C4C) planning permission for the course in December last year, but the Scottish Government subsequently called in the application for a review over environmental concerns.
The golf course faces significant opposition from environmental groups - Coul Links is a protected site because of its unique variety of habitats, its winter wetlands and the birdlife.
Government reporters are currently “processing all the documentation” provided by the local authority, but a public inquiry into the application is expected, and would take place later this year.
Dr Dargie, an environmental consultant and research scientist specialising in coastal and wetland ecosystems, said that the east coast of the Moray Firth was increasingly being affected by climate change, with more frequent and intense storms, exacerbated by sea level rise.
Golspie golf course has suffered significant flooding and erosion in recent months with damage and breaches in coastal protection measures.
Further afield, Fortrose, Montrose and St Andrew’s golf courses have also reported considerable erosion and damage to their sea defences.
Dr Dargie said: “After little change since a storm surge in 2012, there has been considerable erosion at Coul this winter. Although storms Babet and Ciarán caused significant erosion in their own right, they seem also to have triggered a trend of continuing erosion in normal conditions.
“A high dune cliff now extends north from the Embo slipway to near the mouth of Loch Fleet. Slumping on the dune face follows in the days after erosion events. The dune edge has retreated significantly inland.”
Not Coul has been monitoring the retreat of the dune edge since 2018 by taking successive readings using “highly accurateaccurate, industry-standard GNSS positioning systems, with all collected data independently verified.”.
“At the moment the eroding dune edge is only 3.25 and 3.4 metres from the nearest parts of the proposed golf course, at hole 17 and the back tee of hole 18 respectively,” said Dr Dargie. “The erosion is also just 10 metres from hole 15.
“At present the ground around the 17th fairway and 18th back tee is already unsafe for construction and landscaping due to very recent erosion. More than 4000 tonnes of sand from within the golf course construction footprint has already been lost since November.”
A spokesperson for Communities for Coul said: “It is true there have been an extraordinary number of named storms over the course of this winter, a number of which coincided with high tides. It is not surprising therefore, that there has been some winter erosion at Coul Links in the short term.
“Experts suggest that, over the long term, Coul Links is an area of sand deposition, meaning that the natural process we have seen in recent months will reverse.
“This is one of the reasons why Coul is a great site for a world-class golf course.”
The Scottish Government has said a pre-examination meeting regarding the Coul Links application is to take place on May 13. The meeting will “establish the topics to be assessed and the mix of formats in which they will be considered”.
A spokesperson for the Scottish Government said: “Cases can be considered by oral process, by the consideration of written evidence or by a combination of the two.”
