Standing outside Inverloch Surf Lifesaving Club, president Glenn Arnold watches with trepidation as a storm comes in.<\/p>\n
The clubhouse sits on top of a bank of sandbags, installed to try to reduce the effects of ongoing erosion.<\/p>\n
But the erosion is battering the bags, and the clubhouse is on the edge.<\/p>\n
Mr Arnold said “significant” erosion meant local lifesavers had changed how they did things by shifting their beach access points for emergency responses.<\/p>\n
Since 2012, more than 70 metres of foreshore at Inverloch surf beach has been lost to erosion.<\/p>\n
“Our access points aren’t where they used to be, so we’ve got to travel further, [which has] delayed [response] times,” Mr Arnold said.<\/p>\n
Sandbags have bought time for the clubhouse and the beach, but Mr Arnold said the town desperately needed a permanent solution to the erosion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A sign seen at the Inverloch Surf Lifesaving Club this year. (ABC News: Danielle Kutchel)<\/p>\n
‘Urgent’ works delayed<\/p>\n
The Victorian Bass Coast town of Inverloch has been facing severe beach erosion for more than a decade, losing an average of about 10 metres of beach a year.<\/p>\n
Documents released under Freedom of Information (FOI) reveal the Victorian government was aware of ”an urgent” need for erosion works at Inverloch’s surf beach three years ago.<\/p>\n
The documents show the state government identified the risk of major erosion or inundation in 2022, and said there was a need for on ground works to begin “as soon as possible”.<\/p>\n
The 2022 documents include an application for funding under the Federal Coastal and Estuarine Risk Mitigation Program for the Victorian Cape to Cape Resilience Project on-ground works.<\/p>\n
The application was submitted by the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, now the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA).<\/p>\n
The application said the works would “reduce disaster risk to critical infrastructure and services for the Inverloch township”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The view from the sandbags near the clubhouse at the Inverloch Surf Lifesaving Club. (ABC News: Danielle Kutchel)<\/p>\n
The department applied for \u2014 and received \u2014 $3.3 million in federal funding for on-ground works “that will have significant disaster risk mitigation benefits”, the application says, such as dune management, beach renourishment, groynes and revetments.<\/p>\n
But the money is yet to be spent.<\/p>\n
The application identified the economic impact of the permanent erosion of Inverloch’s surf beach as between $2 million and $80 million in lost tourism expenditure per year.<\/p>\n
The grant application was submitted in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It said on-ground works to mitigate erosion at the beach would need to take place within two years “to mitigate potential disaster risk if a major erosion\/inundation event were to occur”.<\/p>\n
The application also reveals that “state and local government and agency budget constraints” meant there was no funding available to begin the on-ground works within that timeframe.<\/p>\n
‘Still waiting’<\/p>\n
Mr Arnold said he felt the government had failed to act soon enough.<\/p>\n
“It’s infuriating, quite frankly, that three years on we might see some work actually get done when this could have been resolved back when the work was requested,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said the lifesaving club would “bend and compromise” to get the work done and ensure its survival.<\/p>\n
But he added that any works on the beach would likely affect how the lifesavers ran upcoming summer programs, including the Nippers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Glenn Arnold says the town is still waiting for a permanent erosion fix. (ABC News: Danielle Kutchel)<\/p>\n
A gathering of locals in July saw overwhelming support for the installation of rock bags at the beach.<\/p>\n
“There are solutions around not only Victoria but around the country that have worked, but they’re just not getting considered here,” Mr Arnold said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got businesses that rely on tourism, and they’re putting all of that at risk.<\/p>\n
“Three years on, we’re still waiting and we shouldn’t be.”<\/p>\n
Coastline in ‘imminent’ danger<\/p>\n
The documents were obtained under Freedom of Information by Nationals MP for Eastern Victoria Melina Bath.<\/p>\n
She has accused the state government of sitting on the $3.3 million in funding, to the detriment of the Inverloch beach.<\/p>\n
“The federal government provided that [money], and since then we have seen delays and no work,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Bath said the documents revealed the state government acknowledged that “the danger to this foreshore was imminent”.<\/p>\n
Bass Coast Shire Council will begin extending the sandbag wall at the foot of the clubhouse at the end of this month.<\/p>\n
The works are expected to take four to five weeks and have been funded by DEECA.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the council said prior to the 2024-25 financial year, it had spent on average $61,000 a year at Inverloch Surf Beach on coastal protection measures, including installing the sandbag wall and ongoing sand renourishment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bass Coast Shire Council will soon begin working on an extension of the sandbag wall. (ABC News: Danielle Kutchel)<\/p>\n
The ABC sent a detailed list of questions to the premier for comment, but was referred to DEECA.<\/p>\n
DEECA did not respond to the questions directly, but did outline actions it had taken to address erosion on background.<\/p>\n
In September, DEECA announced that dune reconstruction works would begin at the beach in February 2026, including sand dredging and revegetation.<\/p>\n
The project is the first to be completed under the Victorian government’s Cape to Cape Resilience Plan and will be funded by the $3.3 million federal grant.<\/p>\n
The state government expects the works will protect the Inverloch foreshore for five to 10 years.<\/p>\n
The Cape to Cape Resilience Plan is a long-term strategy to manage the coastline and impact of erosion between Cape Paterson and Cape Liptrap.<\/p>\n
It is expected to be released before the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Standing outside Inverloch Surf Lifesaving Club, president Glenn Arnold watches with trepidation as a storm comes in. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,17713,75,17710,69,80061,173822,173820,173823,173821,128,48995,6771,26693],"class_list":["post-304872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beach","tag-environment","tag-erosion","tag-federal-government","tag-freedom-of-information","tag-glenn-arnold","tag-inverloch","tag-inverloch-surf-lifesaving-club","tag-melina-bath","tag-science","tag-state-government","tag-tourism","tag-victorian-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}