The Sunday DailyTelegraph has a story called “Battle lines in the sand over new laws” which gives a very basic account of the State govenrment’s plans to allow beachfront property owners to erect seawalls.
Essentially it goes like this:
The government wants to shift responsibility for the impact of seawalls to the owners of seawalls. Under the changes a beachfront property owner can go through the planning process and build a wall, but if a big storm comes along and wrecks the wall, or damages other properties as a consequence of the wall, the owner has to come up with the dough to put things right.
Sounds fair maybe, but it is dangerous on a number of levels.
First, seawalls always change the profile of a beach by decreasing its natural range of width. They are a really bad idea for that reason alone.
Second, the changes to the act will explicitly put the interests of wall builders ahead of the community. The community’s interest is in an undamaged beach, the wall owner’s is in an undamaged chunk of private property.
Third, by effectively privatising shoreline management the law means that someone can erect a wall that potentially can produce more damage than any private individual can hope to pay for. Cue lawyers at 10 paces as wall owners who mess up their neighbours’ property and destroy a public beach go to court with the government to get out of paying the bill. Or, more likely, the wall owners simply get bankrupted and the public has to come in and pick up the pieces.
So what can you do about it today?
Jump on to the Tele site and add your comments to the story and help the issue build up.
Then join Surfrider Foundation and start making a difference from now on!
From: DailyTelegraph
September 19, 2010
SURFERS and beachfront residents have drawn battle lines in the sand over proposed climate-change laws allowing private breakwalls and sandbagging to protect properties from rising sea levels.
Alternatively, you can copy and paste this link into your browser:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/battle-lines-in-the-sand-over-new-laws/story-e6freuy9-1225926000748
