Accurate water level monitoring needed

The Brisbane Water Foreshore Floodplain Risk Management Study of March 2015 offers comments on planning and the Council's sea level rise planning levels.

In the early days of Gosford Council's environmental office's appointment, it was reported and supported that accurate data was required to make informed decisions.

The data, related to monitoring of air quality, enabled the Council to direct funding based on accurate information and improve decision making.

It all made sense.

This May 2015 study reports collected data that projected and observed the mean sea level rise.

The data showed a variation of 20mm.

Newcastle and Fort Denison reports showed a much different result which was a variation of 2mm.

There is a very clear difference between these two results.

These studies have introduced another variable into the climate change discussion and Central Coast Council's sea level rise planning levels.

How does the Council make decisions without accurate data?

Is there a need for a safety margin of +50mm recommended to development applicants to cover data inaccuracies?

I believe that accurate monitoring equipment straying no more or less than two millimetres should be installed in Brisbane Water and monitored by qualified researchers.

Letter, 2 Nov 2017

John Wiggin, Gosford