Wall St was down 94 overnight, its biggest fall in a month, while the local market is down 66.
Byron Bay to be abandoned to the waves
|
We should all be thankful that the Greens council which makes the decisions at Byron Shire isn’t in charge of Venice. Or New Orleans. Or London. Or Holland. All of those places would be flooded or submerged if they followed Byron Shire’s environmental policy of “planned retreat”. This is a policy created by the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change. If and when, perhaps sometime later this century, the sea begins to rise around the coastline of Australia, DECC says we should give up and walk away from things we have built up since 1788. Low-lying coastal towns, large parts of our cities, roads, bridges, beachfront houses — they should all just be abandoned to the waves. None of that has happened yet, but here in Byron Bay we’ve just had a little taste of what might occur when it does. The local Greens and some sympathisers who dominate Byron Shire Council rushed enthusiastically into the climate change fray during the recent east coast storms. Beaches were chewed away and the erosion left some houses in the suburb of Belongil rather closer to the waterfront than their owners would have preferred. They were to be disappointed when they sought help from their Council. You’re on your own, they were told. Didn’t anyone tell you about planned retreat? Being a self-reliant bunch and determined to protect their property, several of the residents arranged for deliveries of big sandbags known as geobags and the machinery to put them in place. That was when they found that Byron Shire Council was actually batting for the other team. They did their absolute best to hinder and oppose the residents of Belongil. Council enforcement officers arrived to force them to stop all protective measures. One owner found himself in the NSW Land and Environment Court, where he spent several hundred thousand dollars fighting the Council for the right to stop his front yard falling into the Pacific Ocean. Lawyers’ letters from other beachfront residents have since been flowing into the Council, demanding the right to protect their properties. Mayor Jan Barham was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald last Monday as saying “each day we get a new legal threat.” While other councils in the region have done their bit for residents all along the coast, Byron Shire Council has been sitting on its hands for weeks. Large chunks cut from the faces of dunes have left massive sand cliffs suspended perilously close to collapse, posing serious danger to children playing on the beach or people strolling by. The only road into the suburb is close to the brink. Byron Shire Council claims their policy of planned retreat from rising sea levels is behind their opposition to permitting Belongil residents to protect their properties. Professor Ralf Buckley, Director of the International Centre for Ecotourism Research, Griffith University, Queensland, disagrees. In a paper published in Tourism Review International in 2008, he argued that the Council has “consistently and insistently acted against available evidence on climate change and related processes, and in the process has caused significant social and economic damage to the tourism industry and investment”. In contrast to the Tweed and Gold Coast areas, and other coastal shires further south, he believes the Byron council has taken “an almost panic-stricken and highly politicised approach to potential sea level rise. In the process, it has caused damage to its tourism industry and its property values, undermining the town’s major source of employment and the Council’s own rate base”. Byron Shire Council has just voted to put its “coastal management zone plan” on exhibition for public comment. It describes planned retreat as “a coastal management approach that acknowledges coastal processes and hazards as ongoing natural phenomena”. Under the scheme, property owners whose homes are within 20 metres of the ‘erosion escarpment’ will be required to demolish them and remove the debris at their own expense. So keen are the Byron Greens to get moving that surveyors have already been at work at Belongil, checking out houses that might be the first to receive demolition orders. These could include the homes of a few fairly well-heeled citizens, but also a lot of less affluent residents such as the widowed lady in her 80’s whose home is her only asset. The fact that she lost her previous home in the Victorian bushfires of 1983 cuts no ice with the Council’s Green clique. Community losses as a result of this folly will be huge: goodwill, millions in rates to the Council, affordable housing stock (of which Belongil contains a significant quantity) and employment. The small businesses at Belongil employ around a hundred people. The waste of resources in the destruction of homes and property will be enormous. Unless the NSW Minister for Planning, Kristina Keneally, and Minister for Local Government, Barbara Perry, fail to prod Byron Shire Council into taking some sensible action over this issue, several hundred million dollars of prime real estate will be rendered worthless. An iconic Australian holiday town is in danger as a result of a conflict that will scar the social fabric of this area for decades. *It’s time to declare an interest in this whole sorry saga: my wife and I have a townhouse at Belongil. Before the current drama began it was worth around $650,000. |
|
|
18 Comments
While I don’t necessarily agree with the policy of planned retreat, when most of the current Belongil owners bought their properties the policy was already in place, controversial and well publicised. They purchased notwithstanding.
Clearly this is a complex issue and not quite as simple as those with a current vested interest make out.
DISCLOSURE: I am a former resident of Byron and didn’t chose to purchase at the Belongil based on advice from locals, my architect and the council as to the planned retreat policy and the strong probability of serious on-going erosion. I purchased on the beach at Suffolk Park, built a council-required demountable home and accepted that in certain circumstances the house would have to be removed
With sea level rise already underway, and an economy that will soon be focused on dealing with curbing carbon emissions the most sensible response in low lying areas is to gradually abandon them, and refuse point blank to approve any further building in such areas. People need to wake up to the fact that insurance companies are already refusing insurance in such low-lying areas - so people who choose to live there without insurance should get minimal community upport when the inevitable disaster occurs. If we are not prepared to plan our lifestyles around the predictable, ongoing sea level rise then forget Homo sapiens and welcome to Homo stupidity.
The catch is that in this case it is the sea which is rising, not the land which is sinking. In each of the examples you quoted, there is an entire nation which can dig deep to build seawalls etc to delay the inevitable. In the decades ahead we will watch the encroachment of the sea into every seaside city in the world. Here the sensible policy is not to waste resources on the indefensible, but to plan deep into the future for a “retreat from the sea”.
People may argue that it is “only 3 mm per year”. But that estimate by the IPCC did not include incalculable surges of the ice caps of Greenland and West Antarctica. It is wise also to remember that deeper water will deliver bigger waves and this worsening climate is sure to generate them.
While we’re all declaring interests, mine are that I own no property in NSW at all, am a rusted-on Labor voter and generally believe in the scientific evidence that climate change is occurring and sea levels may rise accordingly. That said, the council has no business preventing people from protecting their properties to the best of their abilities. To the extent they have a ‘planned retreat’ policy, this should simply be a declaration that if sea levels rise and root property values, then the council’s arse is covered because they predicted this would happen. If they have a political vested interest in actually wanting this to happen (which would be appalling if it were the case) then this still gives them no reason to prevent preventative action, if you’ll pardon the grammar there.
isn’t this the same complaint we had a couple of months ago which was rebutted immediately by people from the opposite side mentioning that the people who bought these blocks were informed that the degradation was going to happen but still made multi thousand dollar improvements to shacks? Now these people want to make major adjustments to the environment to save their homes?
Is it the same story?
Heathdon, same story as before, still subject to polarised views, and its financial cost free for Crikey to run Ian Evans’ piece. Byron Bay isn’t being abandoned to the waves, in fact its getting bigger.
Just imagine the impacts in Bangladesh where people are unable to embark on half a million dollar self-interest lawsuits to arrest the impacts of climate change.
What are the implications to other parts of the coastline if private property developers are able to armour their pieces of dirt, and therefore transferring erosive forces to publicly vested assets or indeed to their private land-owning neighbours? What of they can’t afford the geo-engineering, a quite extreme form of ‘keeping-up-with-the-Jones’.
Isn’t this another form of economic rationalism, privatise the profits, nationalise the losses?
I live in Manly (all my life) and have a holiday apartment “villa” at Byron between Clark’s Beach and Belongil. Manly and other local beaches have suffered significant loss of sand over recent weeks caused by big seas during a period of seasonally high tides. The local council has taken preventive measures (large rocks) to reinforce retaining walls until the sand returns. The sand will return it always has. My Byron property was built 10 years ago and between it and the water is the unused rail line and approximately 80 meters of bush and sand. During the 20 years I have been a regular at Byron the various sand banks and beaches have change constantly. However, the sand isn’t lost forever it just moves around. It will be quite a awhile before we have any significant change in average water levels (NB there are no reliable statistics of average tides available). I can understand the Byron Council not wanting to spend money protecting individual properties but I have great difficulty in understanding them stopping people from doing it themselves.
In the 1980s coastal developments usually built-in an expected sea level rise of 300mm in the life of the project (canal estate, marina etc). These days they are building in 500mm. In another 20 years we will probably require an 800mm sea change buffer.
So when my children are in their fifties (in 30 years) the sea level will already have risen about 200-300mm over 1980s levels and may be even higher. Unless the entire east coast is concreted in place immediately there is no way Belongil or Gold Coast or Mission Beach will be as they are today. And if they do get concreted in (as Manly was about 60 years ago) how ugly will that be? And where will the concrete and rock come from? The Rudd Quarry? And how much CO2 will be exhausted building the stupid things? Some might say the Green councillors are crazy but maybe Byron Bay’s council is on to something and their ratepayers know it.
I hope your townhouse is on the second floor
How can the continent of Australia be comparable with Holland or Venice? Oh please. Since when did the public interest take sides over building on flood prone land against prior warnings?
Reads to me like upper middle class welfare seeking a license to insert groynes or rock walls for their special section of the beach and the private property profit, causing a domino effect on the public’s other areas of coastline, and socialising the cost of public works to repair those other beaches inevitably damaged by tidal flow.
In other words privatise the profit of a new development and socialise the cost of a stuffed broader coastline?
In the 1960s the Qld Government of the day and the local council on the then Sorth Coast of Queensland commissioned the Delt Report from the Dutch Delf Coastal organisation. The report simply said that if you build on the dunes and these dunes come and go with the seasons then you must accept the consequences and lose your property to the sea from time to time. You can get it back when the dunes reform later they said but you have to wait. There is no way you can defend your property and still have a beach and the whole of the beach must be defended. The Byron bay Council are being quite sensible in their attitude. I do not think the rise insea level now forecast was not taken into account then.
Byron Bay council is acting irresponsibily and could be subject to class action given there are ready solutions in the public arena for the problems faced by Byron Bay residents.
Composite sea walls are widely used in USA and we are installing them in coast lines and river systems in Australia; e.g. to protect coastlines at Palm Beach and Gold Coast, and river banks in Sydney Harbour around the Sydney rowing club. We are also discussing the restoration of the Tamar River in Tasmania, by appropriate use of river walls to prevent erosion of banks which are silting up the river.
Currently, we are in China looking into the protection of its great river systems, as well as flood control. Recently, over 100 people lost there lives, with massive property damage, in the South of China.
And yes, Venice is on our list for investigation as to whether our solutions can assist. We will be discussing with the UN.
These were all described at a recent conference of Local Government members in Canberra. Did Byron Bay councillors not attend? They can get a 2nd chance by attending a focussed conference on protection of coastline and river systems beiug organised by Tasmanina government.
Geoff Alford
Byron Bay council “…could be subject to class action…”. What sort of threat is that? Just because there is a seawall technology that could be used is no reason to start concreting the coast. Every single canal estate in Queensland (where canal specialists evolved remember) now faces the remote but real possibility of being slowly flooded by rising sea levels. Those hundreds of kilometres of reclaimed property frontages are not the responsibility of the home owner or original developer but the local council or the state. Suckers aren’t we? Unless locks are built at the mouth of each existing canal they are all going to need building up. Premier Beattie swore there would never be another canal in Queensland but soon caved in to his own spin. Now Premier Bligh is planning an enormous canal on the waterfront at Townsville with capacity for seven hundred (700) dwellings. Politicians don’t seem to care because taxpayers will ultimately and inevitably pay all the costs - which is just as well because insurance companies are quickly abandoning the field - or estuary if you get my drift.
Just a few quick points in response: 1. Byron Shire Council spin doctors are claiming that people who bought at Belongil knew about planned retreat. Not so. No property owner whom I’ve spoken to at Belongil had heard of this plan until quite recently.
2. The erosion at Belongil is a result of the rock headland built at Main Beach, Byron Bay, by the NSW Government, despite expert warnings of the probable effects, and which serves to protect Council assets - including First Sun Caravan Park, Council swimming pool and Fish Heads restaurant which leases its site from the Council. OK for the Council to protect its own assets but definitely not for the ratepayers.
3. Let’s not get hung up on climate change here. There’s no evidence that the sea at Belongil has risen by as much as a millimetre. Sea level rises may be fifty years down the track.
4. There are plenty of very ordinary houses at Belongil. It’s as mixed as most other Australian regional areas are. In my view, bile expressed towards people who’ve managed to buy good houses is thinly disguised envy. And there’s plenty of that going around at Byron Shire Council. The people at Belongil will fund their own protection from the sea - no-one else is being asked to shell out.
If the people at Belongil had only learned of the planned retreat policy ‘quite recently’ then something is very wrong - perhaps they were not adequately informed about the situation by the people they purchased their properties from, because it has been a well-known (and controversial) policy for many years. I understand it was introduced in 1988 by a conservative-dominated council, and the erosion problem has resurfaced repeatedly over the years.
Obviously the situation with residents proposing to fund their own works is more complex, but a key principle of the policy is presumably that ratepayers shouldn’t be expected to foot the bill to protect a few houses in locations known to be at high risk, and where property owners have had plenty of advance notice (two decades in this case) of what the council policy is.
Byron Shire is not alone in having to wrestle with this issue, and inevitably other councils will have to make similar tough decisions about what resources to expend protecting properties in known hazardous locations.
Sorry, I’ll declare my interest in the matter as well. I donated to, and helped run the campaign of one of the independent councillors who forms the majority bloc on Byron Council.
I think it’s worth adding to this debate the fact that planned retreat applies to other communities in Byron Shire. These include South Golden Beach, New Brighton and Suffolk Park, as well as Belongil. Byron Shire Council has failed to mention this fact to the several thousand people who live in these areas. It’s not good enough to say that someone else should have told these people.
Actual retreat, assuming it is climate-driven, may be many years away but the Council seems to think it is appropriate to inflict a policy that will no doubt bring about a reduction in property values on a section of its residents at this time.
Planned retreat may be suitable for uninhabited coastal areas but in my view the issue of coastal community protection might be best addressed by contributions from property owners, and by local, state and federal governments. While the houses currently under discussion are privately owned there is a lot of national infrastructure at risk here. Houses are both private and community assets.
This is a bit of council’s take on the matter:
http://www.byron.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/media-release/1586
Whilst it is true that council and councillors are somewhat restricted on what they can say on this issue due to the ongoing court proceedings, I do think they have done quite a poor job in communicating the case for their policy stance.