IS it fair to take away the development potential of real estate because sea levels may rise by up to 0.8 m over the next 100 years?
According to a recent presentation by Barrister and Practising Planner, Clem Newton-Brown, at the Planning Institute of Australia Annual Conference, last year’s decision by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to refuse development of low lying land in Toora over one kilometre from the sea, due to the potential for inundation by rising sea levels in the future, has implications for the development of all low lying coastal land in Victoria.
Indeed, the Victorian State Government has now set a level of 80cm as the predicted sea level rise over the next 100 years and planners have been directed to apply this prediction to future planning applications.
As a result there will be many property owners across the State who will have undevelopable low lying land under the current regime in coastal areas (and not necessarily just absolute beachfront either).
Mr Newton-Brown suggests that because nobody actually knows how fast sea levels will rise, but that “the science and accuracy of predicting future rises will improve over time”, that development be allowed with a “sunset clause” which requires a new application to be made in 10 or 20 years to retain the house on the block.
He argues that many lightweight beach houses have a practical life of only a few decades while prefabricated houses could be relocated.
Mr Newton-Brown acknowledges potential problems with finance and insurance but suggests, such an arrangement “is a better result than being told today that your land cannot be developed at all when you may be able to get years of use out of a dwelling before potentially having to demolish or relocate it sometime in the future.”
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This blog post is based on the powerpoint presentation given by Clem Newton-Brown at the Planning Institute f Australia Annual Conference, Darwin, 2009.
Photograph of Currumbin Surf Life Saving Club, Gold Coast, Australia, December 2007, taken by Jennifer Marohasy. While the car park was closed that day, the bar and restaurant did a good trade with holiday-makers keen to enjoy a drink and a meal close to nature. Click on the image for a clearer/larger view.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Unless you live where you get Bay of Fundy type tides, around 3 metres above MSL is a reasonable rule for habitable floor levels near the sea .
If you build a cellar you might lose a label or two but the vintage shouldn’t spoil.
Sea frontages are always higher risk areas for any extreme weather but permanent sea level rise is not high on the list.
The Currumbin SLSC is a lot more uasble today than it was 30 years ago.
hey – that was one of my local surf clubs 🙂
I lived on the beachfront of that area for around 10 years. The sand, that had it’s origins in the sandstone cliffs of Sydney, moves northward due to the currents toward the sand island Fraser Island where it eventually cascades into deeper water.
It can dissappear overnight as the tides move it around. You suddenly have to decend 2 – 3 m to get to the beach level, but it eventually comes back again with more sand from the south and the cycle continues.
That’s right janama. I used to help sand-bag it up.
Like with island nations, sea frontage has a deckspace problem more than a freeboard problem.
These alarmists need to do their flies up when they’re playing with their computers.
That’s right, nothing to worry about, it’s all so uncertain.
“THE record heatwave is believed to have claimed the lives of 374 Victorians, it can be revealed.
The Brumby Government has finally released the impact of the unprecedented temperatures in the last week of January with figures showing the number of deaths was up 62 per cent from the previous year.
The Government, Ambulance Victoria and the Department of Human Services all refused at the time to speculate on the number of deaths.
Did you lose a loved one in the January heatwave.
Tell us below or call our newsdesk on (03) 9292 1226.
But a report on the health impacts of the heatwave from January 26 to February 1 released today shows:
THE number of Victorians treated for heat-related conditions such as heat stress, heat stroke or dehydration surged from an average of 15 to a staggering 514 cases;”
“That’s right, nothing to worry about, it’s all so uncertain.”
Quick! Plan A! Plan A!
We’ll close all the brown coal pits. That’ll make a difference!
SJT, it is deliciously tempting to respond citing the record numbers of deaths from cold in the US recently. Instead, I am going to create an award, “The Denier Who Provides the Shortest Trend as Evidence”. So far, your response is the clear winner.
Yes, very bratty little will; as the person most suited to present Lazlo’s award to you I nominate that known humanitarian, Senator Bob Brown.
Well SJT, The answer to heat stress is air conditioning. Trouble is you and your ilk have made some people feel so guilty about using it or propose to make electricity unnecessarily expensive that these deaths will continue.
Spangled Drongo:These alarmists need to do their flies up when they’re playing with their computers.
Quote of the month on this blog.
If this land, which is apparently an existing subdivision, is no more likely to be eroded or inundated by the sea than any existing subdivision in the area, I can’t see how VCAT can apply this rule based on their own interpretation of future “catastrophe”.
The VCAT decision could easily be shown to devalue the land by a huge amount.
The land owners should be able to sue the pants of them.
I’ll bet cohenite would brain ’em over this.
If the land, however, was wrongly approved for subdivision in the first place because it was a swamp [a la Russell Is. subdivision in Moreton Bay years ago] then the local or state govt should simply resume the land.
SD; such a claim is much talked about and only requires a brave developer to get things under way; there is a contradiction in terms in your description however, “brain em” can’t be done for the obvious reasons.
Well Tony Jones is back to talking about 6m sea level rise on Lateline last night since the Wilkins Ice Shelf bridge collapse.
I did most of my important growing-up on weekends at Currumbin where we owned a property. On my wall there was a photo of that same club house, but the sea was probably 50 metres, maybe even 100 closer to the hills. My father had a photo of himself and a mate in front of a 5 metre erosion escarpment that was 600 mm in front of the steps of our house in the 50s.
Just shows how unpredictable coastal erosion is.
In the 80s, after selling the Currumbin property we looked at property in Byron Bay, but didn’t purchase one block when we found that it only became sea front in the 70s when the allotments in front of it were washed away entirely.
But if people are prepared to take that risk, why shouldn’t they be allowed to?
In Byron they also had townplanning regulations in some areas that you had to demonstrate that your house was demountable before you could get planning approval on the beachfront. We designed a suitable house, and it was quite substantial with RSJs running through it so it could be removed in quarters, which gave it the added virtue of being potentially mobile.
As long as there is no way that they can come back on the council because of inundation, I think these sorts of planning rules are a waste of everyone’s time.
only became sea front in the 70s when the allotments in front of it were washed away entirely.
That would have been the 74 cyclone Zoe that took out Brunswick heads as well.
Shame you didn’t purchase the land Graham – it would be worth well over 1 mil today 🙂
A well known family on the Gold Coast had a farm on South Stradbroke Is. going back over a century.
As the Southport Bar migrated northwards this whole farm eventually got washed away but many years later completely re-emerged as ocean and broadwater frontage land on the Southport Spit, alongside Seaworld, Sheraton Mirage, Palazzo Versace etc where it was now worth squillions.
Even though they can prove its exact location and still hold the title, they have not been able to claim the land and it has been sold to others by govt.
There’s another earner for you cohers.
When the farm at Wategoes Beach, Byron Bay was subdivided by it’s owner the locals were saying “who wants to live way out there for 300 pounds per block!”
You can’t buy one for under 3 mil now 😉
I was going to comment about why the photo of Currumbin when you were talking about Victoria but see you mention it once I open the full article.
We had a house right down near the Brunswick River mouth at New Brighton but I think it was the 1969 cyclone that washed right through to the north arm and took out that part of the village. But it was not the weather that caused this problem. It was the new breakwaters at the river mouth that produced a huge build up of sand on the south side and cut off supply of sand to the north side.
There is actually one academic clown who has been poncing around the NSW North Coast claiming to have “measured” the impacts of climate change on the coastline over the past half century. He has been working off the old aerial photos but appears to have failed to take into account the very visible impacts of these breakwaters that have been installed on every river from the Clarence to the Tweed.
I can recall when the Brunswick surf club was only a metre from the high tide mark but the high dune is now 50 metres away and there is another 100m to the high water mark. One suspects our academic mate has recorded the build up of sand on the south side of breakwaters as the only impact of the breakwaters while recording the loss of sand over longer stretches of coast on the north sides as evidence of sea level rise.
And the sooner Bin Laden nukes “Booring Bay” the better. Greens really know how to f@#$ a place up, big time.