The decision to support a seawall was taken while under administration in June 2022 and appears to be first time such a decision was made.
The wording said the Administrator was confirming Council’s 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.
The discrepancy was noted at today’s public hearing of the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the NSW Planning System and the Impacts of Climate Change on the Environment and Communities.
Two members of the Wamberal Beach SOS Save our Sand community group addressed the inquiry this morning, Monday, June 17.
A third member was unwell and couldn’t attend.
The committee chair Sue Higginson MLC summed up the conversation after Corinne Lamont and Mark Lamont addressed the committee and answered questions for about 40 minutes.
Ms 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.
And that was hijacked at some point on the basis of the 2020 storms (that) were showing some very “dramatic implications of coastal erosion and coastal surges on some individual private property”, she said.
Ms 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.
Minutes from previous meetings of the seawall taskforce show that in June 2021, sand nourishment for the beach was high on the agenda of the taskforce but came to nothing.
The September comments from Mr Cox are also minuted.
Mr Cox left Council in November 2021 after the then new CEO David Farmer decided to “refresh” the leadership team.
The Wamberal SOS promised to give the committee a copy of a report, the Marsden Jacob Report, 2017, which showed the costs of a seawall being the most expensive of options and that sand nourishment was a better option.
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.
Photo taken at Wamberal Beach in April when the Inquiry members visited the beach.
