Faced with rapid coastal ero­sion, the pop­u­lar Quinam Beach in Pe­nal has re­ceived a $12 mil­lion facelift.

The fa­cil­i­ty, which was of­fi­cial­ly opened by Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan yes­ter­day, had been closed for the past few months while the Coastal Pro­tec­tion Unit con­duct­ed land pro­tec­tion works.

Rocks from To­ba­go were stacked along a part of the erod­ed seafront and steps lead­ing to the beach were con­struct­ed. A cliff over­look­ing the seafront was grad­ed and spe­cial grass was plant­ed to hold up the land.

How­ev­er, the beach was lit­tered with plas­tic bot­tles, heaps of dry wood and stones. De­von Holl­wah, who came to the beach with his fam­i­ly said he was hap­py for the project.

“You should have seen what it looked like be­fore. This garbage washed up from the sea. Be­fore they did this work, it was dan­ger­ous. The chil­dren could have fall­en over the cliff. There were old huts there but now the life­guards have a prop­er place to stay,” Holl­wah said.

The area does not have cell phone cov­er­age and a source said it was com­mon for boat­loads of Venezue­lans to ar­rive at the beach.

“Nor­mal­ly there are peo­ple here wait­ing for them. We have seen boat­loads of goat and oth­er an­i­mals brought up here. They re­lease the an­i­mals in the forests,” the source added.

The Guardian Me­dia team took more than a half- an- hour to tra­verse the bumpy 14-kilo­me­tre stretch filled with pot­holes. In some places, the road was shod­di­ly patched. In oth­er ar­eas, heaps of stones were packed in­side the gap­ing pot­holes.

Sinanan, when asked about the state of the road, ad­mit­ted that the road con­di­tions were not ide­al.

“This road has been in that con­di­tion for a long time and we have a pro­gramme which we start­ed to con­tin­ue the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the road get­ting in­to Quinam,” Sinanan said.

He added that log­gers used the road and this con­tributed to poor road con­di­tions.

“This is an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive area and we have to be care­ful how we are open­ing up the road,” Sinanan said. Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment planned to re-sheet the road, Sinanan said re-sheet­ing was not the best op­tion.

“We need a whole re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the road, which means get­ting in­to the foun­da­tion and re­build­ing the road.

He said the min­istry has col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to com­plete the project.