An urgent meeting with the premier on coastal zone management has been requested by mayor Simon Richardson to clarify a government backflip on Byron’s Coastal Zone Management Plan.

According to a former councillor and civil engineer specialising in hydrology, rock wall development applications (DAs) submitted by wealthy Belongil landowners will transfer public land to private ownership and eventually result in the loss of the iconic beach.

Byron Shire Council has settled two long-running court cases brought against it by separate groups of Belongil landowners, one of which has taken six years to finalise.

While the long-running saga of building a 1.1km Belongil Beach seawall may well have exhausted public interest, the significance of its outcome could send Byron Council broke and force an eventual amalgamation, at least according to one councillor.

Belongil landowners will again take Byron Shire Council to the NSW Supreme Court over a ‘significant financial loss and diminution in value of their properties,’ and other issues that have arisen from ‘works in front of the Jonson Street carpark.’

Real estate is often thought to be dry land. But long standing depictions of country in Australia focus on water. Aboriginal Australian artworks remind us of the locations and flow of water as a dynamic integrated presence above and below ground.

Belongil’s Interim Beach Access Stabilisation works are being examined by Byron Shire Council officers this morning but critics of the $1 million spent on the project say the money might as well have been thrown out to sea.