Dam Spin And Raising Hell: It Must Be Flood Season Again

The Minister for Western Sydney, Penrith MP Stuart Ayres, said raising the wall would help reduce the impact of floods on residential areas. “In areas we cannot prevent flooding because they are so low, it would absolutely buy us more time for evacuation and keep roads open longer.” Hazard-reduction burning in bushfire areas was, he said, a fair comparison, and the “decision to protect communities downstream will come at a price, which I think is an acceptable impact to avoid the massive consequence of what floods do to communities”.

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• NSW floods

‘Get out now:’ Sydneysiders evacuated as government renews push for Warragamba Dam expansion

Interestingly, when the Premier, Dominic Perrottet, was asked about raising the dam, he hedged behind generalities about the complexity of the project and urged people in the soon-to-be-flooded suburban areas to remain on evacuation alert. It’s interesting because Sydney now has an annual season for jumping onto this bandwagon, but the Premier resisted.

So what’s it all about? The latest chapter reiterates all the previous ones. In 2017, the NSW government’s Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Flood Risk Management Strategy included raising the Warragamba wall by 14 metres as “the best option to reduce the risks to life, property and community assets posed by floodwaters”, according to WaterNSW, the government entity which owns the dams. The plan went to a parliamentary inquiry which received almost 400 submissions and held seven hearings before releasing its interim report last October. The dam has overflowed more than 50 times since it was built in 1961.

For a seven-person committee that had four conservatives – two Liberals, a National and a Pauline Hanson’s One Nation member – forming a majority, and no Greens, its interim report was a fairly resounding takedown of the government’s plan. Transparency and consultation had been lacking. Documents on the cost-benefit analysis of the threat to biodiversity were not forthcoming. The wall-raising plan was varied from 14 to 17 metres without warning, which aroused the ire of even the federal government, which demanded NSW do its Indigenous heritage work again, and properly. (The required environmental impact statement had not been produced.)