res ipsa loquitur or why cant the govt leave our beaches alone

If the Bayside Council and Department of Sustainability & Environment are allowed to get away with the destruction of the Sandringham foreshore it will be a great tragedy.

The Royal Avenue groyne is one tragedy that has been allowed to remain for too long, the Southey Street groyne is an outrage. The damage to the Southey Street to Tennyson Street beach has been quick and swift with an entire beach being swept away in less than 2 months and that has been over the relatively quiet summer period. In simple terms, the groyne has been over-engineered and the results are obvious.

Quoting Wikipedia -
“The purpose of a groyne is to create and maintain a healthy beach on its updrift side, which in turn provides protection to the land behind. These effects are achieved through two main processes. First, groynes act as a barrier to physically stop sediment transport (sand) in the direction of longshore transport through the system. This causes a build-up of the beach on the groyne's updrift side. Secondly, groynes interrupt the tidal flow forcing the tidal current further offshore beyond the groyne end. This slows the tidal current inshore causing the deposition of heavier sediments and encouraging the beach to grow in size.
However, this is often accompanied by accelerated erosion of the downdrift beach, known as terminal groyne syndrome, as it occurs after the terminal groyne, which receives little or no sand via longshore transport. (It is important to realize that groynes do not add any new sand to the beach, but merely retain some of the existing sand on the updrift side of the groin.) If a groyne is correctly designed, then the amount of material it can hold will be limited, and excess sediment will be free to move on through the system. However, if a groyne is too large it may trap all sediment reaching it and this can cause severe beach erosion problems on the down-drift side, which in turn can result in coastal erosion problems.”

I can just hear DSE saying, well lets build another groyne. No. No. NO NO. Let mother nature care for herself with little or any guidance. REMOVE THE GROYNES. Renourish the beaches every few years if you have to. The GROYNES ARE AN EYESORE. I can hear the Heidelberg artists, Streeton, Roberts, McCubbin, Condor mourning the lost natural vistas.

In the eyes of the law, Bayside Council and Department of Sustainability & Environment are guilty of gross negligence. Res ipsa loquitur. This is the legal term from the Latin meaning literally, "The thing itself speaks" but is more often translated "The thing speaks for itself". The doctrine is applied to tort claims which, as a matter of law, do not have to be explained beyond the obvious facts.
Under the old common law rule, to use res ipsa loquitur in the context of negligence the plaintiff must prove that:

1. The harm would not ordinarily have occurred without someone's negligence
   
2. The instrumentality of the harm was under the exclusive control of the defendant at the time of the likely negligent act
   
3. The plaintiff did not contribute to the harm by his own negligence.

The Plaintiff here is the beloved Sandringham foreshore.

The defendants are the Bayside Council and Department of Sustainability & Environment.

The damage is not irreparable. But action must be swift. The two groynes need to be removed immediately. This is not a case of lets consult for the next 3 years. I don’t recall any public consultation before works started.

Please be put on notice, that if the work to remove the groynes is not begun by 30 June 2007, legal action will be instituted in the Supreme Court of Victoria by public outrage.