Council officials have been visiting Lossiemouth this week to see for themselves the extent of damage caused by the latest storms to hit the town’s harbour and beaches.
Concerns have been raised by residents over the extent to which the sea defences in the town have been ravaged by exceptionally high tidal surges over the last two years.
With the outer harbour wall and sand dune defences ravaged, there are concerns that low-lying areas such as Seatown are under serious threat of flooding in future unless remedial action is taken as a matter of urgency.
Meanwhile the car park at the town’s west beach remains covered in rubble from last week’s storm – although Moray Council say that their staff hope to have that cleared by this weekend.
The car park is adjacent to the Moray Golf Club and is popular with golfers – but is prone to being flooded as was the case last week. Club Treasurer Jim Anderson said: “With the bad storm last week the tide swept a lot of stones into the beach car park which no one has cleared up yet.
“The whole car park was flooded – a small two-foot wall would be a simple solution.”
A tidal surge on the East Beach meanwhile caused further damage to the sea defences, station park and the Seatown Bridge area.
Local councillor John Cowe has visited the area on a regular basis to inspect the damage caused, and last night he confirmed that council officials had also examined the area closely.
He said: “The flood alleviation team have been made aware of the situation and the council consultant, David Gowans, checked it out himself when he was in Lossiemouth for a Sepa presentation on the new coastal warning system.
“It could perhaps be a revelation for them to compare ‘then and now’ images – it would in fact be very concerning.”
(More images showing the extent of the damage to the East Beach area can be found in a gallery on the insideMoray Facebook page.)