Secret documents obtained by an environmental group fighting the plan to raise Warragamba Dam’s wall have revealed the NSW Government did not prioritise “major regional road evacuation options” in a recent flood strategy for the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley.
The documents also reveal that federal environmental experts now believe raising the wall will have “extensive and significant impacts” on Blue Mountains threatened species.
The Colong Foundation for Wilderness through their Give a Dam campaign made freedom of information requests for NSW Government documents relating to the dam and the flood plain. They also applied for documents under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation act which revealed there would be "significant impacts" on threatened species in the Mountains, according to the federal environment department.
The NSW Government passed legislation on October 17 to allow the flooding of as much of 4700 hectares of world-heritage listed Blue Mountains land by raising the wall. Parliament was told it was vital to allow the lifting of the dam wall of Sydney's main reservoir at Warragamba by 14 metres to help reduce flood risks in the Hawkesbury-Nepean rivers downstream.
Give a Dam campaigner Harry Burkitt said: “These previously confidential government documents (from May last year) reveal the NSW Liberal government plan to place an additional 134,000 people at risk on western Sydney floodplains by not investing in much-needed flood evacuation infrastructure.”
“The government is fixated on raising Warragamba Dam to justify the over development of western Sydney floodplains. There has not been a single flood expert in Australia who has advocated not constructing additional flood evacuation roads in the valley. The government is also ignoring clear SES advice that additional flood evacuation routes are needed.”
Associate Professor Jamie Pittock of the Australian National University said it appeared “none of the additional benefits of improved evacuation routes have been considered in the NSW Government's flood strategy”.
In explaining why there were no major regional road options for the flood strategy the NSW Government’s document Resilient Valley, Resilient Communities Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Flood Risk Management Strategy of May 2017 said road option packages were not found to be as effective as reducing risk to life as the dam-raising options. However road evacuation initiatives are currently being implemented to reduce risk during flood evacuation events.
Blue Mountains MP Trish Doyle said the information “just proves what Labor has been saying all along – the Liberal Government is using flood mitigation as a smokescreen to justify raising the dam wall and they will let property developers run wild.”
Minister for Western Sydney, Stuart Ayres, has previously stated that lifting the wall would temporarily flood only 0.06 per cent of the world heritage area, and help prevent “a catastrophic flood” in the fast-growing part of the city.
But the latest information uncovered by Colong and Give a Dam show federal environment department advisors believe the increase “is likely to have extensive and significant impacts on listed threatened species and communities and world and national heritage values of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area”.
Mr Burkitt said it’s “compelling evidence for the Federal Environment Minister Melissa Price to refuse the dam proposal under federal environmental law ... it should be shelved immediately”.
NSW Nature Conservation Council CEO Kate Smolski said the federal government has a responsibility to protect areas of national environmental significance, like the Blue Mountains.
“Time and again it has handed assessment of major projects to the Berejiklian government, which has a record of putting development ahead of the environment. Putting the world heritage listing of an iconic site like the Blue Mountains at risk is unacceptable.”
A spokesman for Gabrielle Upton, the NSW Environment Minister, said the Warragamba Dam wall-raising project will be subject to rigorous environmental and cultural heritage assessment and “until this assessment is completed, it would be improper to comment further”.
Justin Field, Greens Urban Water spokesman said the government had been “trying to deliberately down play the potential impact of flooding from raising the dam wall despite sitting on advice from the federal environment department of 'extensive and significant impacts'.
“It makes a mockery of the Legislative Council's inquiry process that this assessment was not made available… before the recent legislation to allow flooding.”
Minister Ayres told ABC Radio today (November 14) that “the main thing we are trying to protect is people’s lives and properties that were already in the flood plain before development controls were put in place to restrict where properties can be developed.”
