Central Coast Council Watch has a copy of the Wamberal Beach Cost Benefit Analysis from 2017 that community members have been looking for.
The report was noted by the councillors in June 2020 when they held an extraordinary meeting after the storms that saw some Wamberal beachfront owners evacuated and more than 4000 tonnes of temporary emergency rock protection placed on the beach.
As part of a list of recommendations adopted at the meeting, the councillors asked the State Government to implement the recommendations of the 2017 report.
But a month later, the State Government had formed the Wamberal Seawall Advisory Taskforce and a new report was ordered.
The minutes of the first meeting of the taskforce noted that the cost benefit analysis commissioned by the State Government “a few years ago could be improved and needs to be revisited”.
The then CEO of Council, Gary Murphy, then updated the taskforce on the engagement of Manly Hydraulics Laboratory and its progress on new studies and seawall concept designs.
The taskforce continued its work but the councillors were suspended in October 2020 when the council announced it had cash flow issues.
The councillors were sacked in March 2022 after a public inquiry found they should have been on top of the financial issues.
Meanwhile the taskforce continued its work until it held its final meeting on March 1, 2023. By then, Council-under-administration had adopted design guidelines and had signalled its intention to work with landowners for a whole of embayment approach to a seawall.
In May 2021, a review of 30 previous studies, going back decades, was published as part of the Wamberal Terminal Coastal Protection Assessment by MHL.
It summarised the 2017 report as concluding that the net costs “imposed on residents, visitors and other parties from the loss of the beach and construction of a seawall, exceed the net benefits stakeholders would receive from the effects of a seawall”.
“It is noted that the outcomes and ranking of options in this study are significantly different to those of (another report by) WorleyParsons (2015), primarily due to different assumptions, particularly with how property losses are treated,” the MHL report stated.
That MHL report is available on council’s website but the original Marsden Jacob Associates (2017) Cost Benefit Analysis is no longer there.
