Many in the Stockton community thought short-term solutions to the urgent erosion problem were on the right track, but recent storms have seen the Newcastle City Council repairs vanish into the sea.
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It’s disappointing, local campaigner Simon Jones has said of the lack of progress, especially when locals have seen so much effort has gone into trying to find a “work-around solution”.
“It always seemed like a short-term solution [to sand scrape], we just didn’t realise how short-term the solution was really going to be,” Jones said. “The council must be disappointed that the state’s option has left them without anything to show.”
“It’s a bit concerning when the community of Stockton is here facing losing key parts of the area, and the state is talking about building new stadiums [in Sydney].
“The port makes a lot of money and it’s killing the beach and the coastline that its built on. The childcare centre is still under threat, and the sports oval doesn’t get used anymore.”
The work undertaken by council included beach sand scraping north of the Stockton Surf Lifesaving Club and moving it to ‘priority areas of the beach’.
These short-term repairs were undertaken after it was revealed that the state government’s Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) had refused to certify a Coastal Management Plan.
Those plans were rejected due to the cost of an artificial headland, the preferred option by Newcastle City Council.
Parliamentary Secretary for the Hunter Scot MacDonald confirmed that Stockton is in the plans of the state government, but that there couldn’t be “absolute assurances” about time-frames.
“There are a lot of hot spots up and down the New South Wales coast, and it’s not realistic to be working on everywhere and everything at once,” MacDonald said. “[Stockton] is unfortunately never going to be a static environment, which means we are at the mercy of the storms and tides.”
“We can’t give absolute assurances that we can provide a short term solution for the area. There is money available at the moment but it requires a registered Coastal Management Plan.”
MacDonald revealed that the plan may require a short-term exclusion of Stockton.
“Local council applied for the management plan in 2016 and it wasn’t registered,” he said. “It’s likely there will be another submission for just the Newcastle LGA, and that will be accepted. Stockton is going to have to be in the future.”
“We are working with council and collaborating to solve the problems, but Stockton is very complex at this stage. It will have to be a long term solution once the first Coastal Management Plan is working.”