The draft plan for Wamberal, Terrigal, Avoca and Cockrone lagoons would seek to extend coastal planning maps towards their catchments

Where it is up to

The program covers the four open-coast lagoons at the southern end of the Central Coast: Wamberal, Terrigal, Bulbabaring (Avoca) and Culcoroan (Cockrone). Under the Coastal Management Act 2016 they must be managed through a certified coastal management program, and certification is what makes the actions eligible for the state’s coastal and estuary grants. The draft, prepared for the council by Water Technology and dated 21 August 2026, has been through four of the five stages the state’s manual prescribes.

It went first to the council’s Coastal Estuary and Floodplain Risk Management Subcommittee on 29 September. Those minutes record that the subcommittee noted the draft and recommended that Council consider face to face community consultations during the exhibition. On 6 October the Environment and Planning Committee resolved, moved by Cr Jane Smith and seconded by Mayor John McNamara, to recommend that Council place the draft on exhibition for a period of no less than 28 days. All seven members voted for it.

So the next step is a vote of the full Council, and only then an exhibition with a closing date. The committee report says the project team is seeking to start a six-week exhibition at the start of November, which needs the draft endorsed at the October Council meeting. That is the team’s aim, not a decision. When we checked the council’s engagement site, Your Voice Our Coast, shortly before midnight on 16 October, there was no page for the lagoons plan. The draft itself is readable now, as an attachment to the 6 October agenda.

The planning map change

Most of the draft is monitoring, studies and works on or beside the water. One action reaches further. Action 4H would have the council prepare a planning proposal to amend the Coastal Environment Area mapping under the state’s Resilience and Hazards planning policy. Today, the draft says, that mapping for these lagoons generally covers the water and a surrounding 500 metre buffer. The proposal would make it align more closely with each lagoon’s full hydrologic catchment.

The draft’s reason is that what harms the lagoons mostly starts upstream: stormwater, sediment, vegetation clearing and changes to how water moves across the catchment. It says the change would strengthen consideration of lagoon health in future land use planning and development assessment, and points to South Coast lagoons where catchment-scale mapping is already applied. It is careful about what the plan itself would do: including the action does not itself amend the CEA mapping. A planning proposal would follow, with its own technical work and consultation with the state planning and environment departments.

Action 4H carries a priority score of 30, the top score in the plan, shared with three others. It is timed for the first four years and costed as council staff time.

All 20 actions, as the draft scores and costs them

Source: Draft Central Coast Lagoons CMP, Tables 3.2 to 3.7 (priority and score) and Table 4.2 (costs, in 2026 dollars, which the draft says are indicative to about plus or minus 30 per cent). “Staff time” is the draft’s CST, delivered with existing council resources and costed at nil. We could not read a score for 4D in the draft’s table. Sorted by score; action names shortened.

Avoca’s dredge hole, and the lagoon entrances

Avoca Lagoon gets the most site-specific attention. The committee report says the lagoon’s declining health is believed to be driven by changes to its bed from commercial dredging in the 1980s. Action 4E is a feasibility study, not a fix: a new survey of the dredge hole, a look at refilling it (possibly reusing material dredged from Avoca Beach or brought in from elsewhere), the environmental effects of doing so, and a preferred approach that could then go to design, approvals and funding. It is costed at $60,000. Action 4F would study a treatment wetland in the southern arm, near the outfall of Bowtells Drain, for $30,000.

For all four lagoons, Action 3C would act on recommendations of the 2019 Gosford Creek and Lagoon Entrance Review where appropriate. That includes a line to Investigate possibility of incrementally raising the breakout levels to build resilience to sea level rise and better protect threatened species and ecological communities, alongside a review of the triggers, methods and timing of entrance management operations. The draft says that work should stay flexible and respond to changing community flooding needs. It is costed as staff time.

Action 4G would audit private and semi-private structures on or next to lagoon foreshores, identify unauthorised ones, and set priorities for removal, rehabilitation, regularisation or a lower-impact replacement. The draft says such structures were a common concern raised during engagement, and that some may have historic or ongoing community uses that need balanced management. It is rated low priority.

Who pays

The business plan totals $4.98 million over 10 years, $800,000 of it in the first year. The committee report and the draft’s text give $4.9 million, labelled a net present value, and the report says the state’s Coastal and Estuary Grants Program typically funds up to two-thirds, so the council’s own share may be significantly lower. Six of the 20 actions are costed as staff time only. The two biggest lines are the monitoring program at $1.5 million and foreshore access plans at $1.0 million, the latter the plan’s largest capital item.

1. August 2021 Stage 1, the scoping study, completed.
2. April 2024 Stage 2, technical studies, completed.
3. 1 to 29 October 2025 Stage 3 community engagement: online survey and four drop-in sessions.
4. March 2026 Stage 3, options and business plan, completed, after five community focus group workshops.
5. 21 August 2026 Revised draft program issued.
6. 29 September 2026 Subcommittee notes the draft, asks for face to face consultation in the exhibition.
7. 6 October 2026 Environment and Planning Committee recommends exhibition, 7 to 0.
8. October 2026, aimed for Full Council vote, which the report says is needed at the October meeting.
9. Early November, aimed for A six-week exhibition, by the project team’s timetable; the committee set a minimum of 28 days. Then adoption and the Minister’s certification.

Sources: committee report, 6 October 2026 agenda, item 3.5; subcommittee and committee minutes.

The Hawkesbury-Nepean plan waits a month

The same committee meeting had the Hawkesbury-Nepean River System program up for adoption. That plan is shared by six councils and covers the river’s tidal reach, including Brisbane Water. It was exhibited from 20 April to 31 May and drew 111 submissions, 64 of them about Central Coast sections. The committee deferred it, 7 to 0, to its 3 November meeting; the minutes record no reason. At the subcommittee in September, members had also asked for more information to go to the committee on dredging around the Ettalong channel for navigation.

Our view

This is a careful plan, in development since 2021 and shaped by a 35-member community focus group, and most of it is sensible housekeeping for four small, sensitive waterways. But read the money, and much of it is measuring and studying: the biggest line is monitoring, and the two Avoca ideas residents are most likely to notice are feasibility studies, with any actual works left to a later decision and a later budget. The draft’s phasing puts studies first, and certification brings the state’s grant money within reach. The action with consequences beyond the water’s edge is 4H. If the catchment mapping goes ahead, development well back from the lagoons could be assessed with lagoon health in mind. Anyone who lives or builds in those catchments, not just on the foreshore, has a reason to read the draft and comment when it opens.

We will report when the exhibition opens, with its closing date and how to have a say.