NSW floods: plan to raise Warragamba Dam wall caught up in red tape

As homes in Western Sydney fill with water the plans to raise the wall of Warragamba Dam remain mired in objections and red tape that have stopped work for almost three decades.

As homes in Western Sydney fill with flood water the plans to raise the wall of Warragamba Dam remain mired in objections and red tape that have stopped work for almost 30 years.

“You cannot stop the flood from happening, you can only choose where you slow the water,” Minister for Western Sydney Stuart Ayres said.

The proposal to raise the height of Warragamba Dam was first put forward by former Premier John Fahey in 1993 but has been stalled ever since.

Warragamba spilled over in Western Sydney last year amid heavy rain. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

That is 30 wasted years of drought when the work could easily have been done but now Mr Ayres said the climate had clicked “like clockwork” to floods and the problem remains.

“Noah built the ark before the floods began,” Mr Ayres said. “We missed that chance.”

Public submissions on the impact of raising the dam wall by 14 metres have closed and the Environment Impact Statement is now being considered by WaterNSW, which will report to the Department of Planning.

Planning Minister Anthony Roberts will make a decision based on the recommendation.

The Federal Government will also consider the environmental impacts and a NSW Government request to fund half the estimated $1.6 billion cost. Both State and Federal Governments will have to agree to go ahead before any building work can begin.

But while they are talking the dam is expected to release the equivalent to half of Sydney Harbour, more than 240 gigalitres, into the sodden Sydney catchment in the next 24 hours.

Lined up in opposition to the project are environmentalists who believe that raising the dam wall will damage parts of the heritage listed Blue Mountains and encourage housing development on the flood plains.

“We already don’t allow development on high risk flood zones,” Mr Ayres said. “Raising the dam wall will not allow one extra home to be built there.”

And he said the dam would not store water and leave areas permanently submerged but would release it within hours or days.

Mr Ayres said every other option had been explored and raising the dam wall was the only one that would stop some of the water from flooding the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers.

However Harry Burkitt, General Manager at the Colong Foundation for Wilderness, said: “Western Sydney urgently needs flood evacuation roads, not a dam project that will only benefit flood plain developers who want to make a quick buck.

“We stand alongside the insurance industry, One Nation and the former SES Deputy Commissioner in fighting against this developer-driven dam proposal.”

The Insurance Council of Australia has also stopped short of supporting the project until all environmental and cultural heritage options had been assessed.

‘PROFITS BEFORE PEOPLE’ CLAIMS IN WARRAGAMBA WATER FIGHT

The Insurance Council of Australia is putting profits before people by opposing plans to raise the Warragamba Dam wall, Western Sydney Minister Stuart Ayres says.

The accusation came as Mr Ayres argued that raising the dam wall is the only feasible option to reduce the risk of flooding to thousands of homes in Western Sydney.

A proposal to raise the dam wall by 14 metres is still being assessed by the government and is awaiting the final outcome of an environmental-impact statement process.

The peak insurance body dropped their support for raising the dam wall last year.

Warragamba Dam at 99.5 per cent capacity last month as the La Nina summer continues to bring heavy rain falls across the Sydney catchment area. Picture: Toby Zerna

“Without satisfactory environmental and cultural heritage impact assessments being completed and made public to allow for full and open assessment, the industry is unable to support the proposal as it currently stands,” Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) CEO Andrew Hall wrote in a letter to parliamentary inquiry into raising the dam wall.

The industry body proposed “alternative mitigation options to reduce flood risks,” after previously supporting a higher dam wall.

Mr Ayres has now accused the insurance council of putting their members’ bottom lines ahead of people’s lives by reversing its position.

In the ICA’s own submission to a parliamentary inquiry examining the dam wall proposal, the body said that flood insurance is “priced based on risk” and in some Hawkesbury Nepean locations “with extreme flood exposures,” flood cover can be up to five times more expensive than the national average.

“It is therefore difficult to escape the conclusion that the insurance industry, by advocating for options that have already been assessed as less effective, is actively seeking additional revenues at the expense of Western Sydney communities through higher premiums,” Mr Ayres said in a letter to the ICA CEO last year, seen by The Daily Telegraph.

To reduce the impact of future floods, the government has previously been urged to instead buy back thousands of homes in flood prone areas of Western Sydney, but Mr Ayres said this would be impractical.

“The cost to relocate 5000 people, just to buy their homes, the actual cost would be in excess of $5 billion,” he said.

“Do they want to buy all of Windsor? Do they want to buy all of Pitt Town? Do they want to buy all of Richmond?”

The proposal to raise the dam wall by 14 metres to create around 1,000 gigalitres of flood mitigation capacity is still tied up in red tape amid opposition from environmental groups.

Indigenous groups are also opposed to the plan, saying that raising the wall to temporarily flood areas above the dam’s current high water line will destroy significant cultural sites.

The longstanding Coalition government policy is still awaiting for the final outcome of an Environmental Impact Assessment.

The Telegraph understands that Mr Ayres wrote to the federal government last week seeking money to pay for the proposal in the case that it is approved.

Warragamba spills over. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Any federal government money would come from Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister Barnaby Joyce’s portfolio, but Environment Minister Sussan Ley would also need to give the green light when a proposal is finalised.

Mr Joyce said the federal government could assist states with funding the wall raising, but it was up to NSW to get the projects approved and he was “highly cynical” about their ability and willingness to do so.

“It can’t be the case of running down to Sydney to build a dam even though they can’t build any in the country,” he said.

Mr Joyce told The Daily Telegraph it was clear raising the Warragamba Dam would better protect Western Sydney from major flooding, but the NSW Government needed to show it had the capacity to build water projects it’s already committed to.

“The problem we’ve got is dams such as Dungowan Dam which was supposed to start in October still hasn’t started,” he said.

“So if we’re going to go down the path of building Warragamba Dam, they have to show a propensity for projects they’ve currently got on the books, they have the capacity to get them done in regional areas.”

An ICA spokeswoman said the body had “revised its position on raising Warragamba Dam following stakeholder engagement and is awaiting the Federal Government’s environmental assessment to be completed”.

“Insurer profits on home and contents policies in areas of extreme weather risk are either constrained or non-existent … so claims that the ICA’s position on the dam are driven by profit make no sense”.