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On the 22 and 23 September 2009, articles appeared in The Australian critical of the planned retreat policy of Byron Council. The editorial on the 23rd made several strong statements about the importance of protecting property rights. Bruce Thom as President of ACS wrote to the paper requesting that they publish his letter to show that this issue has national implications. The letter was not published. We are placing it on our web site for purposes of communicating our concerns.
"Byron Council like all councils around the Australian coast where houses have been allowed to be built just behind the beach is confronted with a dilemma (“Councils Must Retreat”, 23/9). These councils face the difficult task of planning for a future in which sea level rise and changing wave conditions may induce episodic retreat of the shoreline during storms.
This is not a new phenomenon in Australia and elsewhere. Three options are used in coastal management to meet the sometimes conflicting interests of beachfront property owners under threat of erosion and the desire of communities to maintain a public beach.
The options are to protect properties, to accommodate the impact with some form of building redesign, or to retreat and relocate. All options come with costs to the landowners, councils and the beach loving community. In places like New Jersey the decision to hard wall sections of the shore in front of expensive homes has resulted in the loss of the beach. This is on a coast with a rising sea level. To use a wall and then nourish the beach with sand from other sources as on the Gold Coast can be very successful but it is expensive and requires a massive tourist industry to be sustainable.
We have known since the report of the Public Works Department in 1978 that the Belongil beach section of Byron Council is a problem yet land owners continue to rebuild, and very crude attempts have been made to protect existing properties such as dumping car bodies. Successive councils and state departments have grappled with the problem recognising the costs to the owners, the right of the public to have access to a beach, the consequences that any hard structures at Belongil will have on shorefront land downdrift of the eroding section, and of course the costs of any major protective works similar to what has been undertaken at Noosa and on the Gold Coast.
Australian society will in future be seeing more of the problem facing the different interests at Byron under climate change. Some difficult and costly decisions will have to be made if we are to hold onto our beaches in built up areas. It is not a simple matter of just protecting property owner’s rights. It is also going to be a matter of protecting the rights of a community to have a beach. Byron’s dilemma will eventually be Australia’s dilemma."
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