Flood wall planned for the north bank of the Teifi
NRW wants a continuous tidal wall from Cardigan Bridge to Gloster Row car park, 327 metres of sheet pile and stone, up to about two metres above the ground in places. The pitch is protection for around 90 homes and businesses on the Strand. The price, for boat users, is the slipway.
High tides have already put water on roads and into properties along the north bank. The design standard is a 1-in-200 flood plus a century of sea-level rise, with the crest set at 4.95m above Ordnance Datum. Where the wall is set back, NRW says it will make intertidal habitat. Along Strand there would be wider pavement, trees and a raised bed.
Part of the wall cuts through Gloster Row car park. That alignment is why the public slipway into the Teifi would close for good. The Sea Scouts slipway goes too. In its place the scheme offers an up-and-over canoe and kayak ramp south of the old foundry, for the Scouts and other permitted groups, not a public launch in the same sense.
What the drawings actually say
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Line
Right bank, Castle Street bridge to the east end of Gloster Row car park. Four stretches on the drawings: Area 1 by the bridge and bathroom centre, then along the Strand frontage to the Scout field and the two slipways.
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Wall
Mostly sheet piles with an engineered riverbank on the water side, stone cladding and a concrete coping. A reinforced concrete section in Area 1.
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Access
Construction traffic is described coming down Pont-y-Cleifion, Morgan Street and Carrier’s Lane onto Strand. The existing slipway was ruled out as a materials route.
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Parking
The wall bisects Gloster Row car park, so fewer spaces. That is also the alignment forced, NRW says, by a Dŵr Cymru rising main and the need to set the wall back for habitat.
The fight that is left
Consultation is not the same as consent. Planning at the county is the next public argument: height of the wall on Strand, loss of the slip, what “permitted organisations” means on the new ramp, and whether a car park is the right place to draw a defence line.
For anyone living between Castle Street and the quay, this is the scheme that decides how the town meets a higher sea. Paper copies were left at Cardigan Library on Morgan Street. The project mailbox is still the one on the NRW consultation page.