Warragamba Dam Raising

To whom it may concern,
We live in moments of history and this is one.
There are other viable alternatives to this proposed site which will have irreversible effects far reaching into the future.
World heritage has to stand for protection against all comers. What if we sold of part of the Barrier Reef for short term gain. Unacceptable.

To whom it may concern,
As a bushwalker in the Blue Mountains I have come to know and love the area and the valuable wilderness contained there. This is a World Heritage site and must not be compromised. Also, I understand that raising the dam level would not increase residential safety. This is not a suitable place to build homes. Surely we are clever enough to find alternatives to raising the dam wall.

Please don't go ahead

To whom it may concern,
I have been a resident of the Blue Mountains area for 15 years and am gravely concerned about the Warragamba Dam wall raising.
The proposed wall raising not only threatens 65 kilometres of wilderness rivers, and 5,700 hectares of National Parks, unique eucalyptus species, and a number of threatened ecological communities (notably Grassy Box Woodland) and habitat for endangered and critically endangered species (including the Critically Endangered Regent Honeyeater and Sydney’s last Emu population), it is a clear breach of Australia’s obligations under the World Heritage Convention with regards to the Blue Mountains National Park place on UNESCO’s World Heritage list in recognition of its Outstanding Universal Value for the whole of mankind.
Gundungurra Traditional Owners have not given their free, prior and informed consent for the proposal to proceed. Given over 1541 identified cultural heritage sites would be inundated by the Dam proposal, this would appear to be a gross oversight, particularly when we coonsider the recent Rio Tinto Juukan Gorge catastrophe. The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment Report has been severely and repeatedly criticised by both the Australian Department of Environment and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) for not appropriately assessing cultural heritage in meaningful consultation with Gundungurra community members.The engineering firm (SMEC Engineering) who undertook the environmental and cultural assessments for the project have an established history abusing Indigenous rights, recently being barred from the world bank. This is not good enough!
Please consider the widespread community and cultural concerns and refer to the alternative options to raising the dam wall, which the current and insufficient EIS failed to comprehensively assess.

To whom it may concern, I am lodging this submission to strongly oppose the proposal to raise Warragamba Dam wall. The stated reason for this project, protecting the Hawkesbury-Nepean flood plain from flooding, is not valid. The flow of water from sources other than the dam site are enough to cause flooding. This fact is ignored in the EIS. The firm that produced the environmental and cultural assessments for the project is unreliable and biased against Indigenous interests. Only 27% of the affected area was surveyed for culturally important sites. Other issues, such as the effect on threatened species have not been adequately assessed in the EIS. Overall, damage to the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains area would be enormous. Any claimed economic benefits from the proposal are not addressed in rhe EIS.
The proposal must not be allowed to proceed.

To whom it may concern,
Thank you for the opportunity to make this submission. As someone who understands the importance of governance and loves the wilderness upstream of Warragamba Dam, I reject outright the Warragamba Dam Raising EIS.
There was good governance in the early 1990s in response to the proposal to raise the Warragamba Dam wall that enabled a fair contest of ideas. The fairness enabled The Kowmung Committee, a small community group of mostly bushwalkers, to run an effective campaign against the proposal that culminated with success in 1995.

To the best of my knowledge, no party contested the decision to reject the above proposal. Thus, the onus was on The NSW Government and the property development sector to pursue other options to mitigate against flooding downstream of Warragamba Dam. Furthermore, the reality of anthropocentric climate change had already arrived, especially for the insurance sector, including the resultant trend of more severe and frequent extreme rainfall events.
Instead of accepting defeat graciously, however, a critical mass of influential proponents of raising Warragamba Dam worked behind the scenes to advance their objective. Their activities prevented the sensible reform of land-use zoning downstream from Warragamba Dam and are a significant contributor to the population of Sydney being too big from numerous perspectives: endangered ecological communities and species, commuters, people with respiratory diseases caused and aggravated by atmospheric pollutants, and anyone who is genuinely committed to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, the parties promoting the raising of the Warragamba Dam wall are themselves the architects of the flooding “problem” that they claim the proposal is the “preferred” option to address.
Here is a defining feature of a policy option that is genuinely preferred over competing options: The proponents of such an option engage squarely with the strongest arguments against it. In the case of the proposal to raise the dam, the strongest competing arguments are about wilderness. These arguments were powerful enough to prevail in 1995, and the evidence supporting them has escalated during the interim. (Refer to submissions specifically about wilderness.)
Therefore, the question arises, how much have recent proponents of raising the dam wall engaged with competing arguments about wilderness? As little as possible is the damning answer. They achieved this by exploiting their powerful networks to marginalise wilderness considerations through successive policy and political processes. Systemic deficiencies in governance enabled this exploitation.
If good governance were the norm in NSW, the resurrected proposal to raise the Warragamba Dam wall would not have triggered serious concerns, preventing the proposal from gaining traction. “What about the greenhouse gas emissions of cement production and other aspects of raising the dam wall?” More importantly, “What about the negative impacts – ecological and cultural (Aboriginal and bushwalkers) in the Declared Wilderness and Wild Rivers upstream of the dam?”
Good governance would also have manifested as a healthy scepticism about assurances that if the Warragamba Dam well were to be raised, the increased water storage capacity would only be used for flood mitigation. The premise of this assurance is that the pressure produced by an increasing population of Sydney would never result in more in the storage of more water in Lake Burragorang than the current maximum volume. However, in the words of a policy person at Sydney Water many years ago, “People get angry when they turn the tap on, and there is no water.” The electoral implications of this reaction are readily apparent. If the Warragamba Dam wall were raised, only a minority of the population of Sydney would benefit. Further, the majority’s concern about water supply would trump the concerns of the minority about the risk of flooding. more in the storage of more water in Lake Burragorang than the current maximum volume the premise is false
It is wise to retain the Warragamba Dam wall at its current height, making it physically impossible to increase the volume of water stored in Lake Burragorang. Conversely, it would be unwise to increase the height of the dam wall and rely on bureaucrats to do the right thing against the wishes of their political masters. In generic terms, it is much easier to reduce or stop the release of water through a dam wall than to increase the height of a dam wall.
Every increment of the increased volume and, therefore, depth of the water in Lake Burragorang discussed above would cause inundation of Declared Wilderness (and other magnificent bush). Such inundation causes ecological (and cultural) harm. Here is a summary of the chain of causation: (i) increased population of Syndeny, (ii) more inundation of land around the edge of Lake Burragorang, and (iii) harm (ecological and cultural).

The authors of the EIS failed to give that chain of causation due consideration, which is reckless. However, the failure of governance is more important than the individual failings to which it contributed. Specifically, The NSW Government has failed to embrace the precautionary principle, a pillar of ecological sustainability, which amounts to negligence. (Let me know if you want more justification for that assertion.)
The response to the Warragamba Dam Raising EIS is a litmus test for the NSW Government. Is the Government entrenched in strong anthropocentrism, a world view incompatible with prosperity (anthropogenic climate change is a case in point)? Or is the NSW Government ready to move towards ecocentrism, a world view that benefits nature and humanity?
My friends and I are quietly optimistic that the NSW Government will do the wise thing and not approve raising the dam wall. That decision is required because the biosphere is the habitat, and humans are the inhabitants. The latter is dependent on the former!

To whom it may concern,

I am not a resident of Western Sydney and so am not directly affected by potential flooding in the region, but I do enjoy the Blue Mountains and surrounding regions & believe it to be far too important environmentally as well as culturally to allow the proposed raising of the Warranga Dam wall.

Common sense dictates that much of the existing development in the flood plain was foolhardy at best. To spend enormous amounts of public money, severely affect important local environments and submerge sites of aboriginal cultural heritage, to protect existing development and allow more, simply is not reasonable, sensible or acceptable to any decent human without a vested interest.

It is hard to believe that the department would have engaged an engineering firm which has been barred by a respected international organisation (the World Bank) due to a history of ignoring or abusing indigenous rights to take on the environmental and cultural assessment.

I am not a regular, protester or activist by any means. But as a concerned taxpaying resident of Greater Sydney, this proposal does not stack up as being of overall benefit to the community or environment.

Given previous and current proceedings before ICAC, this smells of more state govt venality with environmental assessments being made by organisations likely to reach findings to support the developers agenda, insufficient protection for aboriginal cultural heritage sites (again), and willful underestimation of the environmental impacts of the project.

I'm sure a number of property developers who make large donations to political parties would disagree with my view, but at some point somebody in power must stand up and simply do the right thing, rather than consistently capitulate to wealthy and influential vested interests.

To whom it may concern,
I am against raising the dam wall because of the following reasons:

1. Over 1541 identified cultural heritage sites would be inundated by the Dam proposal.
The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment Report has been severely and repeatedly criticised by both the Australian Department of Environment and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) for not appropriately assessing cultural heritage in meaningful consultation with Gundungurra community members.

2. An estimated 65 kilometres of wilderness rivers, and 5,700 hectares of National Parks, 1,300 hectares of which is within the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, would be inundated by the Dam project.

3. The engineering firm (SMEC Engineering) that undertook the environmental and cultural assessments for the project has an established history of abusing Indigenous rights, recently being barred from the world bank.

There has to be an alternative solution.

Object

To whom it may concern,
Leave Warragamba as it is.
There are many reasons, from experienced scientists who advise against raising the wall.
Just leave it alone.
There are better things to do with the money:
Hospitals, schools, environmental protection etc.
You get it right?

To whom it may concern,
I personally oppose the raising of the dam given the facts that several state agencies recommend that the plan be revisited and that the current plan has failed to address many issues in relation to first nations people sites, endangered species and even the necessity of doing so in the first place.
Raising the dam(n) wall should be a very last resort but we all know that we waste precious water on a daily basis at an alarming rate. Before we raise the wall and destroy ecosystems and the playground for many Sydney siders we should thorougly invest into ensuring that water isn't wasted both commercially or in residential application.
Efficiency and optimisation before brute force and in this case the planning has been hapazard and basic. This should be addressed before any decision is made or approvals to commence work is granted.

I am against the raising of the walls for Warragamba dam.
1. I regularly go hiking along the Kowmung river and am shocked that this Wild River is proposed to be impacted (65km of wilderness rivers will be).
2. The area to be impacted is World Heritage- that is sufficient evidence of special values to be conserved against this proposal. Even if there were a high level of ecomonic and social benefits that can only be achieved by this proposal (which I do not accept because there are alternatives that provide those benefits), I would still be against the proposal. As a citizen, I place a higher weight on environmental values than the current NSW government, who find it all too easy to justify any destruction of environment on the basis of higher economic objectives. With such a biased weighting scale, there are no environmental constraints on development, and all environmental values are under jeopardy.
3. I do not beleive offsets of the environmental values to be lost are sufficient. For instance, I walk along the Kowmung, and it is unique. I will not enjoy walking along any offset set out somewhere else, knowing what was lost.
4. I have little confidence in an environmental and cultural assessment being conducted by SMEC Engineering, with its poor reputation.
5. There is no modelling of the stated flood and economic benefits of the dam wall raising- this is a glaring omission.
On average, 45% of floodwaters are derived from areas outside of the upstream Warragamba Dam catchment. This means that no matter how high the dam wall is constructed, it will not be able to prevent flooding in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley downstream.
There are many alternative options instead of raising the Warragamba Dam wall, which would still protect existing floodplain communities. These other options have been recommended as the most cost-effective means of flood risk mitigation.
Alternative options were not comprehensively assessed in the EIS. Any assessment of alternatives does not take into account the economic benefits that would offset the initial cost of implementation.
6. The ongoing flood risk of existing and newly built areas in Sydney's west is a serious concern. Climate change is contributing to that flood risk, as sea levels raise. Flood risk is a constraint on development, which must be heeded, and I am against building in flood prone areas. The environment must not suffer costs due to ill-guided government decisions to approve housing development where it should not be. Government should instead find other solutions that do not cause irreparable damage to world heritage values. Those other solutions exist, accordindly this development proposal is ill-conceived and should be rejected.

To whom it may concern,
The Blue Mountains are Iconic and we need all the trees we can have to replenish atmospheric oxygen, so don't flood more of the Blue Mountains.

To whom it may concern,
I want my name withheld from publishing the submission online.
It would be a tragedy for the Blue Mountains if there was a raising of the walls for Warragamba dam.
The area to be impacted is World Heritage. That is sufficient evidence of special values to be conserved against this proposal. I place a higher weight on environmental values than the current NSW government, who find it all too easy to justify any destruction of environment on the basis of higher economic objectives. With such a biased weighting scale, there are no environmental constraints on development, and all environmental values are under jeopardy.
I do not believe offsets of the environmental values to be lost are sufficient. For instance, I walk along the Kowmung, and it is unique. I will not enjoy walking along any offset set out somewhere else, knowing what was lost.
I have little confidence in an environmental and cultural assessment being conducted by SMEC Engineering, with its poor reputation.
There is no modelling of the stated flood and economic benefits of the dam wall raising- this is a glaring omission.
On average, 45% of floodwaters are derived from areas outside of the upstream Warragamba Dam catchment. This means that no matter how high the dam wall is constructed, it will not be able to prevent flooding in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley downstream.
There are many alternative options instead of raising the Warragamba Dam wall, which would still protect existing floodplain communities. These other options have been recommended as the most cost-effective means of flood risk mitigation.
Alternative options were not comprehensively assessed in the EIS. Any assessment of alternatives does not take into account the economic benefits that would offset the initial cost of implementation.
The ongoing flood risk of existing and newly built areas in Sydney's west is a serious concern. Climate change is contributing to that flood risk, as sea levels raise. Flood risk is a constraint on development, which must be heeded, and I am against building in flood prone areas. World's best practise is building outside the 1 in 500 flood event.
NSW Government is planning to allow an additional 134,000 people to reside on the Western Sydney floodplain after the dam is raised.
The environment must not suffer costs due to ill-guided government decisions to approve housing development where it should not be. Government should instead find other solutions that do not cause irreparable damage to world heritage values. Those other solutions exist, accordingly this development proposal is ill-conceived and should be rejected.
In the end, I regularly go hiking along the Kowmung river and am shocked that this magnificent and wild river is proposed to be impacted (65km of wilderness rivers will be).

I request that the NSW government reject the proposal to raise the Warragamba Dam Wall for the following reasons showing fundamental faults in the decision making process that render it invalid and negligent. 1.1 absolute failure to consider the public safety issue of catastrophic dam wall collapse because of the age, concrete condition and geological features associated with the wall construction (decades ago) of a dam for water supply. That is, it now proposed to modify the dam wall to increase water retention for "flood mitigation" from a potentially very dangerous and poor quality starting point and increase an already high public risk of dam wall failure. This is foreseeable and potentially criminally negligent. See past reports of Dam Safety Committee. 1.2. failure to properly consider the 45% + sources of floodwater in the Hawkesbury river catchment and alternates for management of the floodplain issue. This is potentially criminally negligent. 1.3. failure to consider the ongoing flood risks to existing and new developments even if the dam wall is raised, including the need to "spill" more water in times of high rainfall. This is despite the insurance industry's clear alerts and will also potentially grounds negligence. 1.4. Failure to take into account the clear statements by the NSW Minister Stuart Ayres of the intention to raise the dam wall for other highly relevant purposes and actively supporting further residential development on the floodplain below the dam wall development; recent proposals by Minister Stokes to facilitate commercial development on the floodplain; the ongoing development of and surrounding Badgery Creek airport, including land based transport infrastructure on and into the floodplain. 1.5 failure to provide any viable business case for the proposal, particularly as to costs and funding. 1.6 failure to provide any alternates or proper costings. 1.7. the proposal prevents the NSW state governments own latest bio diversity legal protection proposals for carbon offsets in the national parks; the vegetation to ground this will be destroyed in the new flood zone. 2. deliberate attempted misuse of an archeological survey and failure to even adequately take into account the impact of the proposal on indigenous cultural and natural heritage sites throughout the area impacted behind the dam wall. There has not even been an adequate assessment of what is proposed to be destroyed and this makes a mockery of government statements of even consultation with our indigenous Australians who are part of the oldest living culture on the planet. Shame on you NSW state government. This is unceded aboriginal land and the custodians have objected in the strongest terms with the limited legal protections available to them. There has not been any proper assessment of the impact and there has been major issues identified with the process conducted that renders the whole thing invalid. They have had no opportunity in the past to object when the wall was constructed and later raised. This is there first and only opportunity and they are being deliberately it seems ignored. Shame on you NSW state government. 3. totally inadequate consideration of the international and national environment protection law in the environmental impact statement completed, particularly in the proposal that partial periodic and intermittant inundation and flooding of valleys will have no lasting impact. Any view of the water peak lines behind the existing wall shows the total destruction and devastation of the land and vegitation. It is an outright lie to claim otherwise in light of the visual evidence. 4. absolute inadequate if not negligent failure to consider the impact of the proposal on the last remaining wild river and biodiversity- vegetation, habitat, animals and birdlife (endangered and otherwise)- behind the existing dam wall, particularly in the context of the damage done in the world heritage and national protected national park by the 2020-21 bushfires. Shame on you NSW state government.

To whom it may concern,
I reject the proposal for raising Warragamba's walls for the impact it will cause to a World Heritage listed site and threatened species.

To whom it may concern,
• The engineering firm (SMEC Engineering) who undertook the environmental and cultural assessments for the project have an established history abusing Indigenous rights, recently being barred from the world bank.
• Severe fires during the summer of 2019/20 devastated 81% of Blue Mountains Heritage Area. No post-bushfire field surveys have been undertaken.
• Only 27% of the impact area was assessed for Aboriginal Cultural Heritage.
• Threatened species surveys are substantially less than guideline requirements. Where field surveys were not adequately completed, expert reports were not obtained.
• No modelling of the stated flood and economic benefits of the dam wall raising are outlined in the EIS.
• The integrity of the environmental assessment is fundamentally flawed, and cannot be accepted as a basis for further decision-making by the Minister for Planning.
Gundungurra Traditional Owners have not given their free, prior and informed consent.
• Over 1541 identified cultural heritage sites would be inundated by the Dam proposal.
• The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment Report has been severely and repeatedly criticised by both the Australian Department of Environment and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) for not appropriately assessing cultural heritage in meaningful consultation with Gundungurra community members.
• If the State Government are wanting to 'embed ancient Indigenous knowledge' (Turnbull, 2018) into its plans for Western Sydney then they better make sure they don't destroy it all in the process.
The Warragamba Dam wall raising proposal is a developer driven scam. We might well wonder who is really running this state? Urban Task Force and the developer interests it repesents or the people. The People SAY NO TO THIS PROJECT. Unequicocally NO.

I support the Proposal.

I believe the proposal will benefit the Nepean Hawkesbury river systems on a flood mitigation basis, the modification of the Auxiliary Emergency Spillway from a fuse plug type to a controlled overflow type is a true plus. My concern is about flooding at Wallacia, while there is localised flooding during a major rain event along Jerrys Creek which flows into the Nepean River, when water is released from Warragamba Dam it flows into the Nepean river at Norton’s Basin downstream of the Wallacia Weir. The natural flow of the Nepean river through the Village of Wallacia is impeded by the Norton’s Basin junction and the flow restrictions in the Nepean/Hawkesbury river systems this causes backwater flooding at Wallacia.

My question is, I can see a reduction of flooding at Wallacia in small and medium flood events, but what will happen in say a 1-100 or 1% AEP (Annual Exceedance Probability) the 1% AEP is used by councils for Development Applications. We have not (to my memory) had a 1-100 rain event in over a 100 years at Wallacia. In 1873 a major flood was recorded at Grove Farm, Yet we have had major flooding at Wallacia corresponding with the release of water from the existing Warragamba Dam and seeing the catchments of the Nepean and Burragorang catchments are in the same region and when the proposed modified Warragamba Dam spills it will be at a controlled rate for a much longer time how will this affect the Nepean River backwater flooding at Wallacia, I could not see in the EIS where this has been calculated to give an approximate flood level expected at the village of Wallacia in a 1% AEP event, this could cause changes in local Council Flood plans for future developments.

To whom it may concern,
Please do not ever raise the Warragamba Dam wall. The Gundungurra Aboriginal community have made it very clear that this would cause great losses to their cultural sites and also threaten endangered wildlife.
I would urge you to instead consider funding home, business and community rain water tanks in Sydney as so much water that falls on Sydney is not captured.

To whom it may concern,
I am writing to object to the proposed raising of the Warragamba Dam.
I understand this means an estimated 65 kilometres of wilderness rivers would be inundated by the Dam project which is an absolute travesty. To put some perspective on this, 65 kilometres is the equivalent distance from Penrith to Mt Victoria, the furthest village at the top of the Blue Mountains, so it is a vast watercourse that would be permanently altered. In total 5,700 hectares of National Parks would be submerged by water with 1,300 hectares of that within the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. As a resident of the Blue Mountains I am appalled that this natural environment can be altered this way especially when climate change calls for us to preserve our bush.
The NSW Government's proposal to alter these wild rivers including the Kowmung River is ecological vandalism. It ignores our State's declaration to preserve a World Heritage Area. It also flies in the face of the National Parks and Wildlife Act of 1974 which declared the Kowmung River a "Wild River" because of its pristine condition.
I am also opposed to the proposal as it would likely impact key species such as the Camden White Gum which is listed by World Heritage for outstanding universal value, as well as Grassy Box Woodland. It would also reduce habitat for the Critically Endangered Regent Honeyeater and Sydney’s last Emu population.

Alternative options to raising the Warragamba Dam wall to protect existing floodplain communities have not been comprehensively assessed in the EIS.
Also the EIS surveys about threatened species do not meet guideline requirements and expert reports about impact on species were not obtained.

Surely a comprehensive post-bushfire field survey needs to undertaken to assess the Blue Mountains Heritage Area as a whole following the devastating habitat losses of 2019/2020 due to the severe fires in the region. As it has not be done there are big gaps in our knowledge about the impact on many species.
By raising the dam wall Australia is in clear breach of its commitment to honouring and upholding the Blue Mountains which was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list in recognition of its Outstanding Universal Value for the whole of mankind.
Not to mention also that the State's devastating fires two years ago have made this area, our home, even more valuable and worth preserving.