Tuggerah Lakes: The Coastal Lake System at the Central Coast's Core

The Tuggerah Lakes system, comprising Lake Tuggerah, Lake Munmorah, and Budgewoi Lake interconnected by channels and separated from the Pacific Ocean by the narrow coastal barrier, provides the Central Coast with its most distinctive and most used recreational waterway. The lake system's combination of the calm water that wind and surf cannot access, the warm summer temperatures that the sheltered environment sustains, and the accessibility by road from both the northern and southern areas of the Central Coast creates the sailing, boating, fishing, kayaking, and waterside family recreation infrastructure that the region's residents use throughout the year.

The Entrance, the town at the ocean opening of the lake system where the tidal channel connects the lakes to the sea, is one of the Central Coast's most visited tourist destinations, its combination of the pelican feeding that has been a daily ritual for decades, the beaches on both the ocean and lake sides of the isthmus, and the commercial strip of cafes and fish and chip shops that serves the visitor market creating the destination character that sustains a significant tourism economy. The pelican feeding at The Entrance, where the large colony gathers for the daily fish distribution that has become one of the most photographed wildlife spectacles on the NSW coast, is the activity that most visitors specifically come to see.

The water quality of the Tuggerah Lakes system has been a persistent environmental challenge, with the nutrient loading from the urban catchment that drains into the lake system generating the algal blooms and the degraded water quality that have affected both the ecological health and the recreational amenity of the lakes. The management of the lake system's water quality has been the subject of extended collaborative effort between the Central Coast Council, the state environment agencies, and the community groups that use the lakes and have an interest in their improvement.

The coastal barrier that separates the lakes from the ocean provides the most dynamic environmental element of the lake system, the ocean breaching that periodically creates new entrances at points along the barrier managing the water level of the lakes and introducing the ocean species that the lake system supports. The management of the barrier, balancing the flood risk reduction that low water levels provide against the ecological and recreational values of maintained lake levels, is one of the most technically demanding environmental management challenges in the region.