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Would you put your boat here? Want a cheap hotel room with an ocean view?
In what has become an ironic twist of fate, the marina in Lugar de Baixo still has not offered any boats safe harbor, now over two years after its completion. The project is a perfect example of what can happen when engineers take on Mother Nature, and don't listen to people who understand the power of the ocean. The marina was originally going to be located about one kilometer south of its current location, where wave energy is even stronger - at the surf spot known as Ponta do Sol. Save the Waves lobbied the government to move the harbor to a location that was more protected from swell - that would also spare the surf break from harm - but apparently not even that location was safe from North Atlantic fury. (To learn more about our campaign to save the break at Lugar de Baixo, click here.)
"This is just the beginning," says Will Henry, executive director of Save the Waves. "They have built so many projects like this, and they will slowly watch them melt back into the sea. At some point the EU will recognize that many of these projects that they paid for were a preposterous waste of money. Most of these marinas and seawalls serve no purpose except to make the island ugly."
The President of Madeira, Alberto João Jardim, tried once again to place the blame elsewhere. In statements made recently he claimed that, if the surfers and environmentalists hadn't forced them to move the marina, this damage wouldn't have occurred. Experts, of course, disagree. "If they had placed the marina in the original location, the damage would no doubt have been even worse," said a professor of Geology at Universidade da Madeira. "The government was in such a rush to build these projects," added Henry, "that the proper studies were not done. Most of the design work of these marinas and seawalls was done by architects and engineers who have no background in oceanography. It's a classic case of Man versus Nature, and in this case Nature is teaching us a good lesson."
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