Dominic Perrottet: Raising Warragamba wall is the right policy to save lives and property

Raising the Warragamba Dam wall it is the right policy for our nation of drought and flooding rains, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet writes.

Droughts and flooding rains. In four immortal words, a 19-year-old Dorothea Mackellar – writing in 1904 – summarised the entire Australian weather system more succinctly and powerfully than anyone since.

Back then, Australia had just emerged from what remains the most destructive drought in our nation’s history – the Federation Drought – resulting in unimaginable livestock losses. Mackellar’s iconic poem, My Country, captures the anguish and helplessness felt so deeply by the citizens of a fledgling Australian nation, as well as the sweet relief of the drought-breaking rain.

The poem is a frank acknowledgment of the extremes of Australia’s climate. Just 18 years before she was born, the worst flood in known history hit Western Sydney, with peaks of 19 metres at Windsor. Many Australians reading Mackellar’s poem would have lived through that event.

We can relate. This year, our state has endured the worst flooding in generations. The threat is still very much alive. Yet less than three years ago, we were announcing water restrictions as the state battled drought, and dwindling levels in our critical water supply dams approached 45 per cent.

Premier Dominic Perrottet holds a doorstop after the press conference at the Warragamba Dam Visitors Centre. Picture: NCA Newswire

The fact is, our future will feature both extremes – drought and flooding rain – and government’s responsibility is to alleviate the impact of both.

Right now, our top priority is keeping people safe from imminent flooding. That was the focus of the recent first meeting of Task Force Hawk, which was a key recommendation from the flood inquiry handed down in August.

Our government accepted all recommendations from that inquiry, and we are currently working on the long term implementation of those. In addition, we delivered a record $132 million funding boost for the SES in the recent budget. Just this month, the Minister for Flood Recovery turned the sod on the new SES headquarter site in the Hawkesbury.

But we are also taking action for the long term, and last week we committed to expediting the Warragamba Dam wall-raising project by declaring it a critical State Significant Infrastructure project.

The declaration will simplify and streamline planning and decision making, removing unnecessary hurdles and duplication that can cause a project of this scale and complexity to get stuck in the mud.

This project is necessary to save lives and property. The Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Flood Management Taskforce found that raising the dam wall would lower flood levels downstream, give more time to evacuate and decrease flood damage by more than 70 per cent, on average. It’s the best option for a better future.

Warragamba Dam at 99.5 per cent capacity after heavy rain falls across the Sydney catchment area. Picture: Toby Zerna

By contrast, the NSW Opposition wants to permanently reduce the amount of water stored in Warragamba so drastically that water restrictions would need to be imposed and expensive alternative water solutions would need to be found, driving water bills up by about $130 a year.

In short, it’s a plan to make you pay more for less of the thing that keeps us all alive: water.

Even in the short term, the sheer scale of the required spill would only cause more flooding and more damage. So it solves neither the immediate nor the long-term challenges.

Lowering supply in the dam also raises serious questions about how Labor will provide drinking water to the people of NSW.

So far Labor have been very cagey on this. They need to be upfront with people on where they will source drinking water from if they were to reduce capacity in the dam.

It’s hard to think of a more poorly considered thought bubble. Politically, you can see the attraction for Labor: avoid the bother of actually delivering a complex project, avoid dealing with differing community views, and avoid the hard work of sustaining a budget while building for the future.

But this kind of shortsighted opposition for opposition’s sake is a total betrayal of future generations.

Our government has always taken a different view. We have sized up the generational challenges facing NSW, and put forward plans to solve them.

That’s why we delivered projects where our predecessors failed, like Metro Northwest, WestConnex, NorthConnex, and the doubling of the Pacific Highway. Projects with complexities – but the “no-brainer” infrastructure we need.

Now we are applying the same decisiveness and resolve to another indispensable project that will yield dividends for future generations.

Raising the Warragamba Dam wall it is the right policy for our nation of drought and flooding rains.