Wamberal Beach Save our Sand (SOS) community group has pointed out a discrepancy in Central Coast Council’s support of a seawall at Wamberal to a parliamentary inquiry.
SOS representatives Mark and Corinne Lamont addressed a public hearing of the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the NSW Planning System and the Impacts of Climate Change on the Environment and Communities on June 17.
They told the inquiry the decision to support a seawall was taken while Council was under administration in June 2022.
The actual wording was that Council-under-administration was confirming its position, as described in the certified Gosford Beaches Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP), for a coastal protection seawall with sand nourishment as the adopted solution to coastal erosion at Wamberal Beach.
But in September 2021, the then planning director of Council, Scott Cox, noted that there were no actions in the CZMP regarding Council building a seawall.
Mark Lamont told the inquiry that residents’ trust had been shaken, with planning principles and processes having been “abused and distorted”.
“In 2021, the former Director of Planning at Central Coast Council, Scott Cox, correctly reminded Wamberal Beach Seawall Taskforce that the Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) Action for Wamberal Beach was not an action to build a seawall,” he said.
“Unfortunately for Wamberal, Mr Cox left Council a few months later.
“He was replaced by Dr Alice Howe who has since declared the CZMP a mandate to build a seawall at Wamberal.
“You could say the CZMP process was hijacked.
“Since taking up her role at Council, Dr Alice Howe has supported the seawall, overseeing Council’s partnership with the WPA beachfront owners who are finalising a massive seawall DA submission right now, with Council consented as a DA co-applicant.”
“Seawalls and changes to development standards, such as deep piering beyond a hazard line that turns undevelopable land into so-called developable land, provides developers a false sense of security and an inflated sense of property value and lures them to buy and develop in high-risk foredune locations.
“Risks of such developments need to be acknowledged and property values reset.”
Inquiry committee chair Sue Higginson summed up the conversation after the Lamonts answered questions for about 40 minutes.
Higginson said it appeared the CZMP by its very definition advocated a strategic approach to management of part of the coastline that centred on balancing beach access and public interest.
That was hijacked at some point with some political interference on the basis of the 2020 storms showing some very “dramatic implications of coastal erosion and coastal surges on some individual private property”, she said.
Higginson said there was time for a decision on Wamberal Beach to either continue along the path of making it worse or to pivot to go back to a strategic, staged, broader view and it was not too late to do that.
In June 2021, sand nourishment for the beach was high on the agenda of the seawall taskforce but it came to nothing.
SOS is to provide the committee with a copy of the Marsden Jacob Report 2017, which showed that a seawall would be the most expensive of options and indicated that sand nourishment was a better course of action.
Mark Lamont said sand nourishment and dune management would best provide a solution for the beach that would keep the public access and incidentally provide a solution for the private landowners as well.
Thank you again Mark and Corrine for putting forward the wishes of the wider community, we really admire your energy and efforts . Sand nourishment and no to a sea wall.
Thank you Christine for your comment. It sparked my interest and what a terrific job Mark and Corrine have done highlighting what is true and the innocent or perhaps deliberate manipulation from Government Department authorities