A Rising Tide of Disscontempt

When ZaZa Silk moved into her beachfront home, little did she realise the sea would eventually come right through her back door.

Amongst possessions stacked throughout her home, the memory of the storm that changed Ms Silk’s world is ever present. “It’s a silly thing to say but you think there’s my boundary, the water’s not going to go past it,” she says looking at the ten metres of sand that now divides her home from the ocean.

It’s exactly one year since the June storms decimated the Collaroy-Narrabeen coastline, with eight-metre-high tides sweeping away multi-million-dollar waterfront properties.

Now on the anniversary of the storm residents are still left wondering how much they will have to pay for a protective seawall to prevent future coastal erosion.

Despite the Northern Beaches Council releasing their annual Operational Plan last month which allocated $7.5 million to the Collaroy-Narrabeen Coastal Protection Works, property owners are likely to pay around 80 per cent of the costs of seawall construction.

As the spokesperson for the ten worst hit properties, Ms Silk recalls the night the ocean took her backyard. “The police were giving us warnings that we’d have to move out at around 4am,” she says. She remembers witnessing the neighbour’s tiled cabana disappearing into the sea. “You’d be standing there and suddenly a crack would appear. Great pieces of the garden were swallowed by the sea . . . It was quite painful coming back the next day and seeing that the sea had come right to the edge of our property,” Ms Silk sighs.

The financial consequences of the storm have also hit local businesses hard. Anastasia Natoli, who works at beachfront restaurant The Collaroy, explains that as a result of storm damage, “our Pelican Pavilion had to close for eight months . . . so that obviously impacted our business greatly and now we’re only open on the weekends.” Next door, the Beach Club Collaroy had to construct its own seawall after waves tore away the building’s foundations. The Beach Club’s CEO Darren Pyecroft says, “We didn’t have any option regarding financing the wall. We’ve had to spend several hundred thousand just to get our own seawall.” Mr Pyecroft admits they have yet to fully recover, having lost their “million-dollar view” and yet to rebuild their beachside balcony. “The damage has impacted on revenue because of lack of seats and access to the view of the sea.”

However, for beachfront residents the question remains how much are they willing to pay to protect their properties from future storms. Coastal erosion has affected both private and public land, leading residents to submit a joint development application for a seawall. Peter Horton, director of Horton Coastal Engineering, who is coordinating the development applications explains that residents will have to bear a significant cost. “The cost for these options are not cheap. We’re looking at $20,000 a metre of frontage, so typical beach frontage of 15 metres, that’s $300,000 for a seawall for one property.” Mr Horton acknowledges that such costs are a financial burden. “Some are struggling. They are asset rich but cash poor.”

Ms Silk admits that they don’t have a choice, “It is going to be really hard for people to find that money. It’s a necessity to have this seawall otherwise we’ll have no homes.” Mr Horton says that the Northern Beaches Council will pay 10 per cent of the costs matched by another 10 per cent from the State Government, with the remaining 80 per cent paid for by private landholders. A spokesperson for the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage says that the NSW Government stands ready to provide funding assistance to the Council including access to the “$83.6 million allocated to coastal management over the next five years.” However, a spokesperson for the Northern Beaches Council states that, “Protection works on private residents’ property is the responsibility of residents.”

David Schlosberg, Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of Sydney, says that, “Many local communities will not be able to depend on the state or federal governments for the resources necessary to prepare for the impacts of climate change.” Professor Schlosberg suggests that while infrastructure like seawalls offer a short term solution, rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms require more long term options such as planned retreat from vulnerable coastline. “We should do that planning ahead of time.”

However, for the Collaroy residents still trying to recover from the aftermath of last year’s storm, they remain focused on the proposed seawall as the only solution. “We’ve got some of the best beaches in the world here and once they’re gone that’s it,” Ms Silk says glancing towards the gathering storm clouds out to sea, “You don’t know mother nature.”