Public Exhibition Draft Bellingen Shire Coastal Management Program

Submissions closed on 29 May 2024, 05:00 PM

Public Exhibition of the Draft Bellingen Shire Coastal Management Program

At the April 2024 Council Meeting, Council resolved to place on public exhibition the Draft Bellingen Shire Coastal Management Program for community feedback.

Purpose of the Coastal Management Program (CMP)

The program has been prepared in line with the NSW Government Coastal Management Framework, an initiative by the NSW Government to equip communities to respond to the challenges facing the state’s coastline and estuaries. CMPs:

identify a long-term strategy for the coordinated management of the coast, with a focus on achieving the objectives of the Coastal Management Act 2016 (CM Act)
identify coastal management issues and the actions required to address these issues in a strategic and integrated way, and
detail how and when those actions are to be implemented, their costs and proposed cost-sharing arrangements and other viable funding mechanisms.

What is the Program About?

Bellingen Shire Council began preparing a Coastal Management Program (CMP)(PDF, 11MB) for its coastal zone in 2019 with a scoping study of issues in our coastal zone (Appendix 1). Since then, Council has systematically worked through the mandatory requirements set out in the Coastal Management Act 2016 to develop our CMP. The Bellingen Shire CMP aims to set the long-term strategy for the management of the Bellingen Shire coastline to improve and maintain its environmental, social, cultural and recreational values and manage current and emerging issues. The Bellingen Shire CMP focuses on the region's beaches and estuaries.

Once the CMP is adopted by Council, and Certified by the Minister for Environment, Council will pursue funding opportunities to implement the actions within the CMP over a 10-year period. The Program of actions will provide tangible benefits to the local community through maintaining healthy ecosystems and biodiversity, protecting public assets from current and future hazards and ensuring safe and sustainable access to the estuaries.

Submissions must be received by Sunday 26 May 2024.

Click here to view form.