Case studies of coastal councils
Euorobodalla Shire, NSW: Using science in planning and forming partnerships
Statistics
- Area of coastline: 110 km
- Area of freehold land: about 80% of the council area is non-rateable crown land held as national park and state forest
- Population: 34 000
- Absentee population: 39% of the population are non-residents
- Rate revenue: $27.7 million
- Total revenue: $80.5 million
Background
The Eurobodalla Shire is located on the South Coast of New South Wales, and contains large tracts of national parks and forests. It is a rural shire, close enough to the major population centres of Sydney, Wollongong and Canberra to have high absentee ownership, tourism and increasing population, particularly as retirees move to the coast.
There are over 60 unnamed beaches. Tourists flock to the area for swimming, fishing, canoeing, bushwalking and to enjoy the impressive array of marine animals, such as whales, dolphins, penguins and seals. The coastline is made up of sand, shingle beaches, rugged headlands, rock stacks and fossil bearing rocks, which all provide valuable habitat for a vast array of plants and animals. There are five major estuaries in the Eurobodalla utilised for aquaculture and recreational boating and fishing. During the Christmas holidays the population of the Shire soars from 36 000 to 120 000.
The Eurobodalla Shire has a strong history of good environmental management through well informed strategic planning. The community values environment protection and there is strong community involvement in Council activities and initiatives.
There are also a number of retired academics living in the shire and universities in reasonable proximity. The council has been able to harness the knowledge and activities of these universities and volunteers to improve council's own understanding of environmental processes and improve their planning and implementation capabilities. As a result, coastal zone management is a strong priority for Council.
What are the critical coastal zone management issues?
- Increasing population and pressure from tourism at peak times are impacting on the environment.
- Estuary management is important. Not all estuaries are the same, so different vulnerability assessments are required for each. This is a more costly and time consuming process.
- Improving the water cycle, to improve water quality and water availability. Reducing sediment and pollutant loads entering estuaries in turn reduces council's water and stormwater operating costs. New developments must not adversely impact on water quality and must be sustainable.
Why was the council used as a case study?
The Eurobodalla Shire Council was chosen as a case study to highlight their innovative and strategic approach to coastal zone management. High priority is placed on integrated planning processes across Council. Information and knowledge from one area of Council is not used in isolation from other Council activities, but rather integrated into all planning processes. New and old residents are engaged in council activities and their skills are utilised to help Council to achieve their goals. Research organisations and government agency resources have been very successfully harnessed by Council to improve their knowledge, capacity and ability to manage their coastal resources.
The council has a strong history of using scientific information and data collection to inform planning and decision making. Through the planning process they have been able to develop tools to allow for transparent and repeatable decision making. These activities have assisted Council in dealing with increasing development pressures.
Council initiatives to address the issues
Coastal environmental capacity planning
In 2000 Council embarked on a Coastal Environment Capacity Planning Project. The project collated NRM data from numerous sources, including state agencies, on a regional and subregional level. In addition, extensive GIS mapping was undertaken and all the rural catchments were studied to determine their impact, or potential impact, on the coastal lake and lagoon system. In addition, vegetation types, habitat values, bushfire risk, soil landscapes and catchment hydrology information was collated. This information fed into a model which analysed the cumulative impacts of any new developments.
The Council designed the project to assist them with their decision making in regards to sustainable growth in the shire. The areas subject to development pressure were identified, along with the potential impacts on estuaries, coastal lagoons and wetlands. The council wanted to know the environmental (or carrying) capacities and constraints of the catchment and develop planning tools to assist council staff and developers to make good planning decisions.
The project was very successful. Areas unsuited to development were highlighted and other rural areas were categorised and mapped on suitability for development. The information helped to determine appropriate minimum lot sizes and development controls. Environmental benefits of blocks were highlighted, resulting in a greater appreciation by both landholders and developers of the need to protect the natural resource base. This may lead to a system of tradeable or bonus development rights or vegetation offsets to continue to conserve high value habitat or vulnerable ecosystems.
The capacity of council was significantly increased. Skills in the areas of vegetation and threatened species management were improved and developed. Council and the community now have a tool to assist in providing transparent and repeatable planning decisions. Development assessors and building inspectors were trained in the concept of soil landscapes and associated best practice methods. Professional relationships were developed between council staff and state NRM agency officers. Community and landcare groups now have access to excellent GIS and scientific data to assist them with decision making and to develop funding applications.
The information collected has been used extensively by Council in recent years. Council has been able to target landholders to take part in incentive programs. Council has offered 10 year management agreements to landholders to protect high value ecosystems. Council is now considering the introduction of a Tradeable Development Rights system, to provide an economic incentive that does not require government funding to operate and yet achieves excellent environmental outcomes. Other options to be explored are stewardship mechanisms or environment rate incentives to encourage appropriate land management through Property Vegetation Plans (PVP's), Voluntary Conservation Agreements (VCA's) and Property Management Plans (PMP's) - usually prepared in conjunction with state agencies.
The cost of the project was relatively small, particularly when compared to the benefits it has generated, such as increased capacity of council staff and the large amount of data Council can now use.
Lessons learnt
Council is now reaping the benefits of having long term planning processes, access to good quality data and decision support tools. Having a transparent planning process means development assessments must meet initial criteria checks before assessment is undertaken. Developers know in advance what criteria they must meet. This reduces the number of uninformed or speculative development applications, freeing up Council resources. Council priority areas are known, investments are strategic, encouraging partner organisations to assist with funding and research priority areas.
Planning and reporting across Council is integrated, ensuring that the council works together and not in separate independent departments. Undertaking the planning process has assisted in integrating Council activities.
Community engagement is critical. This needs to occur early in the project. At the same time, Council must understand where they are heading and what they need to get from their community. Having funding available to engage the community at different levels is important. It helps to ensure that you can employ people with expertise in community engagement to get the most out of the process.
Integrated water cycle management strategy
Subject to preparation of water and sewer strategic plans, a part of the NSW Government's Country Towns Water Supply and Sewerage Program, Council spearheaded an innovative approach to consider the related process and opportunities of water, sewerage and stormwater management. With assistance from the state Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources, Council undertook a study to develop an Integrated Water Cycle Management Plan for the shire promoting sustainable water use across the whole water cycle. The resulting plan was the first developed for the state. It was adopted by Council in 2003 and implementation is continuing. The plan aims to improve the security of the shire's water supply by achieving optimal water use.
The council's water cycle required upgrading to meet population growth and new state government legislative and discharge quality standards. This strategy allowed them, through a structured process, to evaluate integrated water management opportunities within individual towns in the shire, and the shire as a whole. Through the strategy, Council hopes to achieve more efficient water use, reduce the environmental impacts from water diversions, urban drainage and treated wastewater discharges, and to reduce the long term costs of water services within the shire.
To assist Council to determine the most appropriate water management options, a number of scenarios were developed, using both local and regional integrated options. The social, environmental and economic factors were evaluated for each scenario.
Initially a dam was proposed, however the scenario testing highlighted other options. Instead, Council agreed on a Comprehensive Demand Program. This option was projected to cost Council around $75m less than building a new dam, resulting in rate payers paying, on average, $273 less per year. In addition, better social and environmental outcomes were expected.
The Program includes the requirement that all new developments must contain a 10 000 litre rainwater tank. Council is:
- aiming to retrofit 20 per cent of existing homes,
- undertaking a leak detection program,
- undertaking an audit of non residential water users,
- developing a program to reduce outdoor water use, and
- financial incentives to install water and energy efficient devices and retrofit rain water tanks servicing toilets, laundry and gardens.
The projected savings of the above measures to Council are being used in incentive programs. The pricing of the water cycle has been changed. The dividends achieved through the system are used for catchment management projects and to renew stormwater infrastructure, which in turn improves water quality in the region.
An extensive education campaign has been run by Council to encourage water conservation and uptake of the incentive programs. As part of the project, a number of fact sheets were produced, including topics such as water sensitive urban design, planning controls, rainwater tanks, effluent reuse, effluent return flows and grey water reuse. The fact sheets included the benefits, examples and potential hazards of each management issue. These fact sheets are one means Council is using to educate the community about efficient water use within the home.
Lessons learnt
The project has improved the transparency of decision making, reduced infrastructure costs, increased water quality, improved the water efficiency of the community, increased the reuse and recycling of water and improved the security of water supplies. All this has been achieved with less financial inputs and improved environmental outcomes than could have been achieved by building a new dam.
Investment in research to develop an options paper clearly paid off financially for Council. They are now able to achieve their objectives with improved financial and environmental outcomes. Educating the community and bringing then along in the process assists Council to meet their environmental outcomes within set timeframes.
Tapping into scientific resources and an environmental levy
Council has been successful in obtaining funding to undertake many of the planning initiatives and have been able to access and use university and government agency resources to inform the work. Retired environmental academics and researchers in the area have been invited onto council's 'scientific advisory panel' to guide research and peer review studies and strategies. Council is active in implementing their strategies. Council's ability to fund research and projects has been enhanced through the collection of an environmental levy, which has been in existence since 1996.
The levy allows Council to put forward seed funding for various 'Care' (Landcare, Dunecare, Rivercare and Coastcare) projects, which in turn attracts matching funding from a variety of government sources. The levy also allows Council to employ specific technical environmental officers who can apply for these other sources of funding and provide technical knowledge to the community. Council has also been able to undertake monitoring of projects to assess the effectiveness of measures. Any necessary changes can then be made and environmental outcomes can be measured. This data is not only useful to measure performance, but also assists in accessing future funding.
Lessons learnt
Council has been able to achieve many more of their objectives by having the levy and the leverage it provides. It has made transparent the planning and reporting of environment projects and costs funded through the levy and the in kind capacity contributed by local volunteers. The research funding matched through state agencies has improved knowledge of estuarine and vegetation systems and assists the prioritising of projects designed to preserve or improve the functionality of those systems. Similarly, as community members form the committees established to oversee the environmental research and priority of projects, the community is more likely to be engaged in working on those projects - in turn assisting the success of grant applications. The number of 'Care' groups has more than doubled since council used environment levy funds to match and expand grant funding.
Summary
The council has been able to form many partnerships with government agencies, universities within the region, and with local residents to produce a broad range of planning documents to guide the council. Community engagement is vital and being able to use the human resources within the community has allowed Council to achieve much more than they could on their own. The partnerships have meant that implementation of the plans can go ahead and the council has built up a reputation of being proactive in the area of environmental protection, whilst still promoting development. As a result, many organisations seek them out to form partnerships and undertake projects. Council needs to be careful of overcommitting itself to participating in projects with partner organisations as they can be time consuming and may require many Council resources. However, if the outputs are useful, this time requirement quickly pays dividends.
Contact
- Deb Lenson or Peter Tegart
- Eurobodalla Shire Council
- 02 4474 1000
