Planning For Adaptation: Batemans Bay

Batesmans Bay is a popular holiday destination on NSW South Coast. They man a particularly good planning case study given their idiosyncratic circumstances. Some planning concerns are as follows:

Popular Holiday Destination: This on the surface would seem great for most communities however there are a number potential concerns that have to be dealt with.

-       -    High speed feed in roads around Batemans Bay are notoriously dangerous with a high number of road accidents and high number of associated fatalities, especially around tourist period. Batemans Bay local council given it low population had had difficulty policing these roads and have difficulty securing funding from the NSW state government to fix it.

-    -      Batesman Bay economy is dependent on tourism and there is not much alternate revenue generating industries in the area. Meaning most to towns capital is generated during tourist season and this has to last year round and poor tourist season can be financially precarious for local business owners. Given the overshadowing effect of tourism and the local economies gearing toward that, there lack of alternate industries does not attract any young people to the area exacerbating the towns ageing population problem.

Batemans Bay like much of Australia has an ageing population, however this poses a particular problem for Batemans Bay. The towns ageing population will: face rising medical cost, have a reduced workforce, have limited housing type development and have to exist on already low incomes and pension wages meaning a potential rise in aged poverty and reduced spending to support local business.

- Batesmans Bay is also facing threat from climate change given that they have an expansive coastline (112km) and development has been focused along sections of this coastline (this elongated coast structure combined with low density also contributes to the issue of service and infrastructure duplication). They increased extreme and sporadic weather events associated with climate change will like contribute to already present coastal erosion issues. Low lying development along the coast will also need to be relocated further inland as combined weather events and sea water level rise under moderate climate change model predictions. Coastal erosion and sea level rise mitigation option are expensive as the relocation of infrastructure more inland and these are cost that most potentially could not be afforded by the Batemans Bay community with Federal finance assistance. 

Image Obtained from: http://www.eurobodalla.com.au/annual-coastal-conference