Outer harbour ready to rock
Friday 6th July 2007A cargo of rocks have arrived to mark the first stage of work to create Great Yarmouth's £50m outer harbour. They are aboard the Armour Rock which has been anchored near the mouth of the River Yare since Sunday with its 18,000 tonne cargo awaiting the arrival of a smaller barge which will make regular trips to and from the bigger vessel to deliver the rocks to the shore. The Armour Rock measures 132 metres by 32 metres but is too deep to get to the shore so the smaller vessel will be used to ferry the rocks which will be used to construct the northern breakwater near the former Omni-Pac site in South Denes. John Simmons, the Port Company's operations manager, said work was not due to start until the end of July so the boat's early arrival was a nice surprise after the long will it, won't it go ahead saga over the outer harbour which has been going on for years. he said they were pleased to see the work getting under way and to see things happening so quickly. The boat has come from Sweden with the granite rocks on board and is one of two or three barges which will be travelling over from Scandinavia with more supplies. The breakwaters are expected to measure 1,400m and around 850,000 tonnes of rock will be used in the project, while dredging a reclamation of 1.6m cubic metres of sand to create nearly 18 hectares of new land.
