Dunedin ratepayers have forked out hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years repairing the St Clair seawall and protecting the surrounding coastline.
Now draft plans are out for public consultation on how to best protect the area which is being eaten away by erosion.
St Clair and St Kilda are the jewels of Dunedin's coastal crown. But they are slowly being eaten away by erosion - giant sand sausages act as the last wall of dune defence.
"It's 10s of metres at times but then there are also periods where at which the dunes will build up," Dunedin City Council coastal specialist Tom Simons-Smith says.
The cost of erosion is hitting Dunedinites in the pocket. In the past four years, $226,000 has been spent on physical works including repairs and refilling sand sausages.
Of that, $80,000 has been spent stockpiling more than 16,000 cubic metres of sand for storm responses. A further $169,000 has been spent on sea wall maintenance and replacements.
The cost could be even more - a 2019 report on the sea wall estimated nearly a $250,000 fix for "high priority repairs".
"In the long term, it's not a sustainable option but it is currently the only option we have," Dunedin Mayor Aaron Hawkins says.
A draft plan is out for public consultation with options on how to best protect the coast including a new seawall or offshore structures to disrupt waves.
"It essentially dissipates wave energy or trips a wave over and allows what we call a salient or accumulative of sand to form," Simons-Smith says.
An important defence with rising sea levels and more coastal storms.
One road had a roundabout and carpark at the end of it until erosion started eating away at the road around 10 years ago. Now it's completely gone.
Right next door is the most urgent concern for the council - a legacy landfill with an unknown amount of rubbish buried under Kettle Park.
"In the dune system seaward of that landfill we've also got some asbestos-containing material," Simons-Smith warns.
Down the beach sand levels have dropped significantly and locals are concerned at the sea wall's design and risk to water users.
"It's called sand migration, it's taking it away the sand the wrong way so now at mid-tide, high tide there's no sand," St Clair Action Group co-chair Richard Egan says.
"When I was a kid I used to be able to jump off the wall onto the sand - it was probably only four to six feet high, there was that much sand on the beach," co-chair Johnny De Graaf adds.
Public consultation closes this month to help protect the pristine Otago coastline.
