NSW Coastal Alliance Eurobodalla region coordinator Ian Hitchcock says the Eurobodalla Shire Council needs to decide whether it will act on the issue.

“Do we take defensive action or do we let it go?” Mr Hitchcock asked.

“Are they going to protect Surfside or not? If they are, there will have to be a wall built.”

Mr Hitchcock said Wharf Road, North Batemans Bay, could become a test-case for government control of land ownership and zoning in NSW.

Fifteen previously private lots in Wharf Road are already completely under water and have been returned to public ownership, as part of council’s Coastal Zone Management Plan.

Mr Hitchcock said that should not have happened.

He said inundated private land should only revert to government ownership when the process of submersion was natural.

“The sand loss is not a result of natural processes … the law of accretion does not apply,” Mr Hitchcock said

“When the retaining wall was built along the southern edge of the bay, the whole movement of sand was changed.”

However, council’s director of planning and sustainability, Lindsay Usher, said no expert evidence had been provided to support that allegation.

The first point of action in the Wharf Road management plan is to “apply for the purchase of private properties at Wharf Road that are above high water, to assure current and future generations have public access to the foreshore and beaches”.

Mr Hitchcock asked where it would all end?

“They say they are going to buy it back, but at what price? It is worth nothing,” Mr Hitchcock said

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“If we get a 20 centimetre rise in sea level, as predicted, and half your property falls below the mean high-tide line, does it all get surrendered?

“Council are saying the lots under the water are lost.

“We are saying they could be reclaimed,” Mr Hitchcock said.