Coastal erosion protection sparks debate over planned retreat versus seawalls in NSW

He might not be a household name, but Angus Gordon played a key role in preserving NSW beaches.

The civil engineer helped develop standards for managing coastal erosion, co-authoring the state's first Coastal Protection Act in 1978, and its revision in 2016.

But Mr Gordon said those principles were under threat after the Land and Environment Court ruled beachfront home owners on the NSW Central Coast could build a seawall to protect their properties.

"It seems like nobody took any notice of [the act] and what's happening now is just exactly what I and my colleagues said would happen back in the late 70s," he said.

Mr Gordon said the court decision to allow seawalls at The Entrance North was a "most unfortunate precedent that should never have occurred".

He said he was also disappointed to see Crown Lands sandbagging Byron Bay's Clarkes Beach.

The work is designed to support eroded dunes in front of the state-owned Reflections Holiday Park, but is contrary to his previous recommendation to move structures back from the shoreline and allow nature to run its course.

"Crown Lands should be leading the way as a state government authority," Mr Gordon said.

"But they're not leading the way, they're actually undermining the potential for getting a solution to all this.

"Money is being invested in really silly things, and that's state government money."

A Crown Lands spokesperson said in a statement that a public authority was legally able to install sandbags for up to 90 days.

It said the sandbags already in place in front of the caravan park and the adjacent cafe were approved under development consent from Byron Shire Council until 2037.

A fresh round of sandbagging is expected to start in early August, and Crown Lands will apply to the Byron Shire Council to allow the new sandbags to stay in place for longer.

The current debate is not a new one.

In 1978, Mr Gordon was among several experts commissioned by the NSW Department of Public Works to produce the Byron Bay-Hastings Point Erosion Study after a "dramatic increase" in coastal erosion problems over the preceding decade.

The report found "individual action to solve site-specific problems will not only be ineffective, but it will almost certainly also lead to increasing problems elsewhere".

Mitigation measures such as groynes and sand replenishment were found to offer only short-term solutions, with the authors recommending some areas should be left undeveloped, and gradual retreat planned in others.

The Byron and Tweed Shire councils were urged to control development within 1 kilometre of the shoreline, and stipulate landholders who disregarded the policy did so "at their own risk".

"I've come to the conclusion, after 50 years, that there's very little other option than for the Australian government, Australia-wide, to just simply say, 'You can enjoy the coast while it's there, but property owners cannot protect their property.' End of story," Mr Gordon said.

But for some, living with the fear of watching their homes fall into the ocean, retreat does not seem like a fair option.

Chris Rodgers, president of the Wamberal Protection Association, said it had been fighting to have properties protected from erosion for at least seven years.

"Planned retreat is simply not viable and needs to be taken off the table, as all it does is continue to delay what needs to happen," he said.

Mr Rodgers welcomed the Land & Environment decision and said he hoped the NSW government would now allow all beachfront owners to protect their properties.

"Wamberal represents a great opportunity for a buried sandstone protection solution to be introduced and used as a precedent for the rest of NSW," he said.

Mr Rodgers said rock revetment seawalls offered a long-term solution to erosion, that landowners in Wamberal were willing to pay for.

"Seven years after being evacuated and kicked out of our home for two and a half months, and we're still in the same position," he said.

"But we're still fighting for the right thing, and the government just needs to make the right decisions."

Tough discussions

Southern Cross University Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Professor Tim Smith, said Australia's legal system was struggling to keep up with coastal property disputes.

The coastal expert's peer-reviewed paper, Beach law in the anthropocene — ScienceDirect, was published in July in the Ocean & Coastal Management journal.

It reviewed legal systems around the world and found private property rights trumped public interest.

"Our common law tradition assumes coastlines are stable and coastal property boundaries can be fixed," Professor Smith said.

"But as the effects of climate change become more dramatic, those assumptions no longer hold."

Professor Smith said it was time for tough discussions about a transition strategy.

"We really need to think about what sort of future we want for the coastal zone, and we need to resolve who bears the ultimate rights and responsibilities for these lands — whether we are going to preference private property rights over public rights, whether we're going to preference people's rights over nature's rights," he said.