Delay notation for proper study
Zoe Russell is quite correct that Gosford Council has a duty of care to potential purchasers of waterfront property.
No reasonable person could object to information of risk being provided, if we could be sure that the council is exercising care in applying its warning notation to properties at risk.
However, it is by no means clear that this is happening.
I have received one of the council's threatening letters, but my surveyor shows that a sea-level rise of 90 cm. (the council's standard) would cause an encroachment of a few centimetres on the 90-metre depth of my lot.
To put my house at risk, the water level would have to rise about 30 metres, which would inundate half the City of Gosford.
Nevertheless, my property is one of those being singled out to warn off potential purchasers.
The Council's decision bears all the hallmarks of hasty and inadequate analysis, and the proposed notation action should be deferred until a proper study has been carried out and properties actually at risk have been pinpointed.
Letter, 17 Nov 2010
Bruce Hyland, Daleys Point