Heads in the sand
Despite being a city of coast dwellers, Shoalhaven City Council is avoiding making the tough decisions when it comes to responding to sea level rise associated with global warming.
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We rely on local government to set appropriate development guidelines for many decades into the future to ensure fairness, safety and economic well being of property owners now and into the future.
Council routinely adopts century-long risk profiles when it comes to deciding on development on bushfire or flood-prone land. The same cannot be said for foreshore development risk. The NSW government (in line with international scientific consensus) previously indicated that local councils should allow for sea level rise of 90 centimetres above 1990 levels by 2100.
When the current government chose to leave sea level planning decisions up to local councils, Shoalhaven swam against the tide of science. Earlier this year they reduced the assumed 2100 sea level rise to less than half this amount. Why are we special?
When Councillor Greg Watson introduced his 2012 motion that we should only be looking at the Port Kembla tide gauge for guidance, he suggested we might be different due to "buckling of the surface and/or isostatic rebound".
Considering "isostatic rebound" is the process of land uplift normally associated with melting glaciers, this looked more like grasping at straws than considered argument. Seemingly more concerned about the politics of property values, he also ignored the statistical problems of looking at a single tide measurement point to infer the long-term outcome of a global phenomenon.
The extensive sea level rise report subsequently prepared by Whitehead and Associates for Shoalhaven and Eurobodalla councils was clearly not the answer climate change sceptics wanted.
Oddly, The Heartland Institute, a US think-tank funded by oil and tobacco companies to counter global warming and anti-smoking arguments, responded to the exhibited report. It produced a commentary in September 2014 under the guise of the so-called Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change.
Predictably, this dismissed the value of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change modelling, satellite data and the foundation of the entire Whitehead report. Heartland instead recommended the "use of planning controls that are flexible and adaptive in nature" and used arguments surprisingly similar to the views espoused by Cr Watson two years earlier.
Shoalhaven City Council complied with Heartland, deciding on a coastal policy that minimises predicted rise in sea level by 2100. Council's sea level policy choice ignores the overwhelming body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence and modelling to salve the immediate financial concerns of low-lying beachfront property owners.
It provides unwitting future owners with a false sense of security and leaves Council open to legal recourse for allowing construction in zones of known future threat when expert opinion clearly advised to the contrary.
M. Corrigan, Vincentia
Gifts that really count
This year as we finish our Christmas shopping, please spare a thought for others.
Once you’ve bought a Kris Kringle for a workmate, a quirky gift for your brother-in-law or any of the presents you need for family and friends, consider one more gift for someone who really needs it.
One more gift to Red Cross will help ensure an older or isolated person gets a phone call every day to check they’re OK, clean water for a young child in a remote village in Myanmar, or a shower and a meal for a teenager sleeping rough.
This Christmas I urge everyone to consider making one more gift to Red Cross.
To make your gift to Red Cross call 1800 811 700 or go to redcross.org.au