Waves up to 8 metres have hit Collaroy on Sydney's northern beaches, crashing into beachfront properties and causing an in-ground swimming pool to collapse, as wild weather battered NSW.

About seven houses and a unit block were evacuated at Collaroy as a huge low pressure system moved over the state Sunday night, Inspector Jason Reimer said.

"One of the properties along that strip actually lost an entire in-ground pool which had moved about five metres out to sea," Inspector Reimer said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-06/nsw-weather-large-waves-hit-collaroy-coast/7479846

 

The question is why have a swimming pool so close to the beach?... Just looking at the picture, I would say the damage in Collaroy stands between 150,000 and 200,000 tonnes of soil and sand that have gone AWOL. Meanwhile:

 

 

Record floods in Tasmania

Major flood warnings are in place for rivers in Tasmania, as the island state is hammered by a massive storm cell which caused chaos in Sydney

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-06/east-coast-storm-tasmania-sees-record-flooding-as-wild-weath/7482846

 

Global warming is real. Global warming is anthropogenic.

Every time a storm lashes Collaroy beach, residents worry it will be washed away.

This northern beaches coast – sufficiently famous to be included in the Beach Boys’ 1963 hit Surfin’ USA – is perhaps one of the state’s most studied coastal erosion sites. But with a La Nina event set to bring heavy rains, thunderstorms and strong swells this summer, it’s not just Collaroy Beach likely to see erosion.

The coastal strip was pummelled during a massive storm in 2016 that damaged homes and pulled a swimming pool into the ocean, costing homeowners and local government almost $25 million to fix. Another two big storms further eroded the sand dune in July last year.

Since then, residents, the council and the state government have been working to protect the properties and beach from storm surges, including building a seven-metre-high concrete wall. Once completed, at least three-quarters of the wall will be covered by sand.

The project stretches 1.3 kilometres from Collaroy to South Narrabeen, encompassing 49 private properties dotted with 11 public land areas, which include a car park and a surf club.

And the works have become the topic of local controversy, with some residents worried that the seawall will cause more harm than good, and sand directly in front of the wall could be washed away in the next storm.

Surfrider Foundation northern beaches branch president Brendan Donohue organised a protest yesterday to encourage the council to invest in other measures to protect the beach, including a nourishment plan that would artificially replace the sand. The local community group has been protesting against a seawall for almost 30 years.

‘‘Protective works are a far preferable measure to a vertical seawall,’’ he said. ‘‘The community is not happy.’’

Northern Beaches Council said there had been comprehensive community consultation about the council’s coastal zone management plan for Collaroy Beach.

Senior lecturer at the UNSW Water Research Laboratory Mitchell Harley said many of the erosion issues that Collaroy faces stem from poor planning almost 100 years ago. Many other coastal communities face similar legacy issues, with councils in desperate need of greater support to address contentious issues, he said.

‘‘There are a number of these places up and down the coast ... The lesson from that is, with climate change and sea level rises, there is an increase in pressures on the coasts,’’ he said.

‘‘We will see more and more of these issues come up, and so the important thing is that we don’t create additional legacy issues by poor planning decisions that we make today.’’

The La Nina weather pattern declared last week will add further pressure on many coastal communities, with cooler temperatures, rain and storm events likely to worsen erosion.

Dr Harley and his colleagues have been measuring the erosion on Collaroy for 45 years and found it was usually worse during La Nina. The team will be monitoring the beach through newly installed instruments to observe how weather systems affect beaches and seawalls.

‘‘Normally we get waves coming from the south or south-east. During La Nina events, they shift slightly anticlockwise, so they are more easterly,’’ Dr Harley said.

This means there’s a higher risk of more erosion, particularly over the coming summer, and also ‘‘beach rotation’’ – where the beach realigns itself to the prevailing wind direction, he said. This typically means the northern end of the beach gets narrower and the southern ends get larger.

A report by the Insurance Council of Australia, published this month, estimates the Australian government will need to invest $30 billion in large-scale coastal protection and adaptation projects over the next 50 years.

 

SMH 28 November 2021...

 

A few days ago, Gus was working on his weather predictions in accordance with the moon phases, tidal surges, jet streams, and the present La Niña event... The prognostic was a 50/50 chance of a repeat of the storm mentioned at top on/around the 21st of December 2021 (solstice). A Westerly low pressure merging with a northerly breeze, pushing the winds beyond 160 km/h (100 knots). Collaroy is only protected from the south... I could be wrong.

 

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Is pouring concrete a way of the rich getting richer? Vertical seawalls along the New South Wales coastline are extending the frontage of multi-million-dollar residential properties, while taking the beachfront away from the public. Marcus Reubenstein reports.

Post massive storm surges, and significant coastal erosion, in 2016 residents of Collaroy on Sydney’s northern beaches have been forced to endure a solution that many have dubbed the ugliest wall in Australia. A seven-metre-high vertical seawall has been erected along part of the beachfront between Collaroy and Narrabeen, the next beach north.

In addition to being an eyesore, it’s robbed locals of beachfront while enriching millionaire property owners by, in effect, substantially increasing the usable size of their properties.

The vertical concrete seawall has been erected at the original boundary of waterfront properties; in places, filling in land that was once a natural dune between the beach and the property. Now property owners are free to build pools and expansive grassed areas, leaving behind a public amenity boxed in by a massive concrete wall.   

The justification for vertical seawalls is that they hold back tidal swells protecting the properties and the coastline. Says Angus Gordon, former general manager of the Pittwater Council on Sydney’s northern beaches, “These seawalls are a brutalist solution from the past century. Furthermore, because they have a shelf life, they simply don’t work.” 

He points out that seawalls eventually fail, citing events at iconic Manly and Bondi beaches as examples.

A highly respected coastal engineer with more than 50 years of experience, Gordon says a far simpler and more practical solution is in wide use across the world and in particular Queensland’s Gold Coast. 

“Rock revetments are the obvious and inexpensive solution to erosion and they have been successfully used at Collaroy to the south of the current vertical walls, he says.”

A revetment is a sloping installation of rocks that can absorb major storm events while preventing erosion. “The beauty,” according to Gordon, “is that sand blows up into the revetment, natural vegetation grows, and you’re left with what looks like a dune that doesn’t destroy the natural aesthetic of the waterfront but the underlying rock revetment is there to protect properties if a major storm event occurs.

“Furthermore, revetments can be altered and reinforced, whereas once you’ve built a vertical seawall that’s it.

“You wouldn’t know it, but much of the Gold Coast coastline is protected by a rock revetment buried under the sandy beach and dunes that have been artificially built by pumping sand from offshore onto the beach.”  

While storm surges and beachfront sand erosion are still an issue on the Gold Coast there’s no proposals from any stakeholders to replace revetments with vertical seawalls. 

New South Wales residents hoodwinked

A major issue says Brendan Donohoe, president of the Northern Beaches Branch of the Surfrider Foundation is that self-interest is behind the push for vertical seawalls. “For councils and state government it’s buck-passing as local property owners are footing much of the bill for the seawalls,” he says.

“But an individual landowner contributing $250,000 to the building of a vertical seawall gives them an immediate return on investment as at least that amount is added to the value of their property. It’s a solution of protecting private properties at the expense of community space.”

Aside from its mission to preserve coastline, the Surfrider Foundation is campaigning against what it says is conflicted advice, with a number of waterfront property owners presented with the vertical concrete seawalls as the only option to protect their properties from ocean surges. 

At a meeting of owners of the Marquesas beachfront apartment complex in Narrabeen, recorded by one of the owners, a council officer was seen to be advocating for the construction of a vertical seawall. Aside from issues over its long-term effectiveness and impact on the beachfront landscape, it would also be a far more expensive option.  

Says Donohoe, “Owners were apparently being told a vertical wall had to be constructed and they would have to pay for it. Various alternatives, including sand nourishment, were not put to them.”

Silencing dissenting voices

Following changes to New South Wales planning laws, the state government has effectively pawned off the decision-making process, leaving the hard choices to be made by councils. 

Says Gordon, “Local councils have incredibly high staff turnovers and council officers cannot keep up with changes, they are too easily swayed by outdated coastal engineering thinking, nor do they have any idea of the history of the coastal areas they are responsible for.”

It seems that lack of knowledge has come to play with coastal protection works at Wamberal on the New South Wales Central Coast. There are plans to build three sections of vertical seawalls and Gordon had been appointed to the NSW Planning Department panel to review the proposals.

He was removed from the panel, being informed in writing that, “It has been raised with us that you may have had some previous involvement in this project including media comments and presentation of material to the Save our Sands group and may therefore have a reasonably perceived conflict of interest.” 

In a written response, he hit back saying he had no conflict of interests, adding, “I believe this attempt to disqualify me is because I have been interested in coastal matters, including at Wamberal for 50 years. Hence, I have what could be seen to be an arguably unmatched knowledge of the issues at Wamberal and any proposal to undertake coastal works.” 

According to Gordon the issue was most likely that the panel was giving consideration to a seawall and did not want a dissenting voice coming from a prominent coastal engineer who might advocate a far less costly solution with significantly lesser impact on the environmental landscape.

The Surfrider Foundation has written to the planning panel asking it to confirm rumours that Gordon will be replaced by an engineer who may have a conflict of interest in advising on the seawall approvals. Whilst the panel hasn’t responded a proposed preliminary meeting, at which Gordon was originally listed to attend, has been cancelled. Says Gordon, “I believe the panel has all but fallen over, the whole process has been compromised.” 

More to come

In another baffling planning move, one of Sydney’s most iconic harbourside beaches has endured a two-and-a-half-year transformation that was billed as delivering Shark Beach at Nielsen Park an upgraded reinforced seawall. With cost and time blowouts, and the original engineering firm being sacked halfway into the project, the beach only reopened this month.

Now Shark Beach is missing one thing—a beach. At high tide the water is literally lapping at the base of the new seawall, beachgoers have been hived off onto concrete steps and a pristine piece of harbour foreshore has been destroyed. 

With poor planning, conflicted stakeholders and a lack of proper oversight, says Gordon, “it’s concrete by stealth,” that has the potential to engulf significant areas of the state’s coastline. 

 

Marcus Reubenstein is an independent journalist with more than twenty-five years of media experience. He spent five years at Seven News in Sydney and seven years at SBS World News where he was a senior correspondent. As a print journalist he has contributed business stories to most of Australia’s major news outlets. Internationally he has worked on assignments for CNN, Eurosport and the Olympic Games Broadcasting Service. He is the founder and editor of Asian business new website, APAC Business Review.

 

 

https://michaelwest.com.au/concrete-coast-vertical-seawalls-snatching-the-beachfront/

 

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