By Catherine Sasman
WINDHOEK
The popular seaside camping spot, Mile 14, is closed “indefinitely” for overnight campers due to sea encroachment, the Namibia Wildlife Resorts (NWR) has announced.
According to the NWR, seawater washes over the campsite, making it “just not safe” for campers. Day visitors, however, will still be allowed to enter the resort.
Francios Snyders, NWR Operations Ma-nager on the west coast, said that as much as 90 percent of the two-metre-high embankment of compressed soil on which the campsite had been built was flooded, with the waves reaching as far as the access road to the camp.
Most of the foundations of the toilets on the sites, said Snyders, have been uprooted and these structures have fallen down.
“To reconstruct the site is a serious job and not likely to happen in 2007,” he said, especially in light of the fact that the entire 200-km stretch comprising of the West Coast Recreation Area under NWR is earmarked for private partnerships in the development and management of the resorts.
Snyders said the first reports of high seas along Mile 14 were reported during the winter, saying that it is “getting worse and worse”.
“It has become just too unsafe to have people staying there; if you overnight at the campsite, you will be washed away,” said Snyders.
“This is serious water; it has been abnormally high.”
The condition is experienced only at Mile 14, with other camps at Mile 72, Mile 108 and Jakkalsputz open for the public.
“The rest of the sites are safe and we are ready for the expected influx,” he said.
The NWR said there have not been any bookings that have so far been affected as a result of the situation.
Chief Biologist with the Ministry of Fisheries at Swakopmund, Chris Bartholomea, said sea encroachment happens from time to time along the coast when heavy wave action eats into the land area, and sandy shorelines are eroded in the process.
He, however, was cautious about likening the sea encroachment to rising sea levels as a result of global warming.
“I have seen this once before years ago,” said Bartholomea, adding, “It is a natural process. It is just the way beaches erode; the shoreline keeps on changing shape.”