Council adopts city-wide Coastal Hazard Adaptation Strategy

Redland City Council has today adopted its Coastal Hazard Adaptation Strategy (CHAS), a comprehensive, long-term, coastal hazard management plan.

The CHAS is a city-wide strategy to protect the city’s coastline and islands and includes recommended actions to help Council and other stakeholders, including property owners, adapt to coastal hazards such as erosion, storm tide inundation and sea level rise up to the year 2100.

Redland City Mayor Karen Williams, who chaired the project’s steering committee, said the adoption of the CHAS was a great achievement for both Council and the Redlands Coast community.

“Today, we reached a key milestone in protecting Redlands Coast against coastal hazards,” she said.

“The CHAS assessed the vulnerability of infrastructure, assets and property to coastal hazards and identified a range of city-wide actions and adaptation responses to assist Council and other stakeholders, including property owners, utility providers, local businesses, and community organisations now and into the future.

“The strategy will help us implement cost-effective mitigation measures, manage development and growth, budget for higher costs, collaborate regionally and seek funding opportunities.

“I’d like to thank the community and external advisory group for being a part of this journey and providing feedback into several of the project’s phases and the draft strategy.”

Cr Williams said the CHAS outlined where coastal protection infrastructure and management strategies would be required, as well as the timing and triggers for these interventions.

“The CHAS recommends a range of actions to enhance Redlands Coast’s adaptive capacity by gathering and sharing information that in turn identifies how infrastructure and assets may need to be modified in response to emerging hazards,” she said.

“The next steps for Council include embedding the consideration of coastal hazard risks and adaptation actions into our planning practices and processes, planning and delivering coastal protection works and initiatives based on an improved understanding of risks and impacts and appropriate adaptation responses and timeframes, and engaging utility and service providers to assist them in adapting their infrastructure and assets to coastal hazards, to the benefit of the community.

“The recommended adaption actions will be continually informed by community input and ideas, new knowledge, and monitoring the effectiveness of actions, and I encourage everyone to visit Council’s online project page to view the final CHAS and look through the online resources.”

Council’s CHAS has been developed in line with and is partly funded through the Local Government Association of Queensland’s QCoast2100 program.