Ballina ‘well-positioned to rise to sea level challenge’
November 12, 2009
Ballina Shire Council is well-advanced in its planning to meet the challenges of rising sea levels over the next 100 years.
Recent media reports have claimed that the town centre will need levees and pumps to keep sea levels at bay. The suggestions came during the 18th NSW Coastal Conference, which was held in Ballina last week.
But John Truman, the council’s Group Manager Civil Services, says the council has three projects already dealing directly with issues of climate change and rising sea levels.
“Last year council adopted an update of the Ballina Flood Study,” he said.
“The update specifically aimed to model the effect of climate change on flood impacts.
“The study looked at the existing catchment conditions and then added all proposed future developments.
“It looked at what measures could manage those impacts, and this information was fed into a computer model.”
The model is constantly being updated, and now includes the West Ballina Structure Plan, Southern Cross Precinct Master Plan and the Ballina Bypass Refined Design.
Early work for a risk management study has now been completed and includes climate change impacts. The end product will be a
management plan that will set out the council’s future planning responses to floods.
The council says it recently completed a second project, the Ballina Shire Coastline Management Study. It began by defining the coastal erosion hazards, then consulted with the community about ecological, social, recreational and economic values and worked through options to manage these threats.
The work used the latest published sea-level rise predictions to calculate the outcomes of the study.
The end result will be a new Coastline Management Plan. A draft will shortly be shown to government agencies and experts in the field to ensure that the council uses best practice in coastline planning.
Thirdly, Ballina Council is developing a Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Strategy that includes a climate change risk assessment and sea-level rise action plan.
The strategy will be developed by the council, with guidance from the Centre for Sustainable Regional Communities at LaTrobe
University.
The council aims to complete this project in early 2010.
In coming weeks the council will confirm the scope of the strategy and how it will promote community engagement for this important issue.
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