Let’s hope Mr Zamprogno that you are as open and transparent after you have have your behind the scenes meeting with the council staff reviewing why the Starr Property was to be avoided. Listening to the General Manager trying to deceive councillors and the public by suggesting it was to impact less properties is reprehensible given the proposed route impacts more land owners and she is well aware of this. That the Hawkesbury Mayor simply says they can’t find crucial documents explaining why the Wilcox’s farm should be acquired is not acceptable to the community and should not be acceptable to our elected councillors who supposedly representing us.

Then I think there are three major issues that need to be resolved. 1. The council and/or employees of the council be held accountable over the handling of this project and the immense pain that this has put on the Wilcox Family in particular and 2. That the original or alternate route that uses vacant land or at least minimises the impact to owners land be sort after and agreed to. And then finally 3. The bridge be built.

Before I could support this bridge I would like three answers. 1) Traffic impact at Springwood Rd and Castlereagh Rd intersection at peak hour 2) Traffic study on vehicles passing Grose View School during pick up and drop off times 3) Expected travel times during floods from North Richmond to Penrith because there will be a lot of vehicles trying to access this route and some people suspect a traffic jam from Glossodia to Springwood.

Council has a lot to answer for, build the bridge! Unfortunately not 100% of people are going to be happy where ever it is less talk more action required.

Nathan. The General Manager states that up to 5 or 6 properties may need to be partially acquired to amend the route, this is incorrect! If they partially acquired 6 properties on Grose River Rd that would be over 1 kilometre of property acquisitions including my property. The reality would be 1 additional partial acquisition. The other important question is what speed are they designing this bridge too because this will impact the design. If the bridge is being designed to the downgraded speed of Grose River Rd at 60km/h they may not even need to acquire 1 additional property. I suspect they are designing the bridge route speed to 80 or 100km to over exaggerate the land required to compulsory acquire. No more smoke and mirrors please!

How about a bridge that starts at where the new round about is being built on the cross between Grose view and Grose River Road that goes straight over Navua Reserve with minimal impact and all the way to Castlereagh Road so when the next floods hit there is an exit route. Saves time with people heading to Penrith for work and lowers the traffic heading towards the North Richmond Bridge..... just saying it would make so much sense 🤷‍♀️

Get the bridge built NOW no more bloody delays.

So if the Grose river bridge is funded by Redbank communities and was part of the development deal what and where is the crossing approved and announced by the federal government last year please?

If it was a Redbank development condition: GET THE BRIDGE BUILT..

Redbank has been playing the game for years trying to get out of it grubs

Wow some truths well done

Wow, you would have thought this deal was signed and sealed before any development began?

James Kirkwood

The environmental damage to the hawkesbury river from these three major flood events has been devastating the animals have been wiped out many well established trees gone river banks destroyed but that professor doesn’t discuss that even one month on there is rubbish and plastic everywhere like the friendship bridge at Pitt town Bottoms shown in that story

This guy needs to come and help clean up somebody’s flooded house

This is also our 2nd flood this year with water in our house but not our first flood. The thing is we can talk about this till we are blue in the face nothing will be done. Everyone has been talking about this 10 years ago and 10 years later we are still talking about it. The Greenies will never let it happen and the Govt don’t have the balls to do it. Unfortunately us of the Hawkesbury have to continue to live with this while the rule makers fight with each other. I have had enough also. Something has to be done and done now. We are well aware that another significant rain event is happening this year in Sept/Oct why can’t we start releasing water now bit by bit instead of waiting till we are in full flight of the floods. Raise the wall, release water earlier and stop building little communities in the area where their stormwater affects the flood plains running into the creeks. Hawkesbury is acreage not houses with no backyard and 10 families in one house. Sorry but it is frustrating and annoying to see this happening. This is not progress this is councils money raising and being selfish. Rant over

ok, I'm not against raising wall but has anyone investigated whether it is safe to do this? Need a very detailed engineering report on whether current wall/foundations can support higher wall & more water pressure.

Make the Dam bigger ! Dig out more channels. Regarding the wall, its getting old and may need maintenance in the near future. We need more Dams built while we are in a glut of rain atm build it to catch it all. Because the droughts will come back and last a few years again as history keeps showing us. They could also look into building another dam further up from warragamba with another wall, that can pump the water through. I feel for all those people effected, very sad

I'm very much affected by this flooding also 3 times is the last 18 months and to say I'm over it is an understatement. But let's look at this logically the dam was built to hold water not release it below the spillway correct. Yes the dam has a spillway once it reaches 95% but I can't see any reason why they would have built it so we can just dump water below the spillway just seems silly. In my opinion raising the wall is the best option but I'm sure that will take 4 to 5 years to complete and by then all this rain will be over.

Yes release the water now sos Flood due in Sept And yes to dam wall but that will take another 10 years !!! Investigate - pump the water pipe the water make energy from the moving water !!! Stop the flooding !!!

The rules for the dam to be used purely for water storage were drafted in 1962, 60 years ago!! That is 4 or 5 million people ago. The Greater Sydney Met has grown phenomenally since then. The amount of storm water runoff, and change to the landscape, must force change to dam management in the short term - NOW!!

Has the Sild ever been cleaned out of the 50 years it's been there is that why they want let it out b4 the weather event because of the capacity of sluge higher than the water level Sydney might run out out of water sorry to all that was effected but it's only going to get worse we r screwed in September to October another flood has been listed to happen 5 meters higher that means even Parramatta wil flood and the only way out is up the Blue Mountains oh but hang on the rivers are b4 mountains so how do we evacuate

Wait until the new airport is finished South Creek inlet to the hawesbury wil b double the amount of water so the wall isn't going to help

Rubbish re raising the dam wall - it is scaremongering. They won’t be in power when the wall is raised anyway.

Change the legislation- no to raising the dam wall. Listen to the people.

More water/Higher wall is not the answer, built a dual purpose tunnel through the mountains

Or ban births

Build another dam near it all the access water can go to Sydney's back up dam

Megaera Fagan Caroline Collen Julian Dirou Steve Fegen

Paige Hooper Ryan Hooper Geoff Werner

Luke Curran

This Hawkesbury river height at Windsor on the Monday of the flood period. The flat line is the river from Thursday till after Midnight Sunday. The steep line is when the Dam spilled. The dam was around 97% leading up to the weekend meaning if you spit in it they would have to spill. What the minister is more concerned about in regards to spilling is not the loss of drinking water it is the revenue lost from dumping water into the river as water Nsw sells water to Sydney water, ker-ching over lives . To hold 97% water in the dam when a predicted rain event is coming is criminally negligent and quite possibly could lead to involuntary manslaughter. Councillor Nathan Zamprogno what is the official word on the rumours doing the rounds now of another flood in sept/ oct? Numbers around 19 mtrs have been mentioned by 2 people I’ve spoken to. If long term forecasters are predicting something like that we all need to know.

James Burn

Tbh I don’t really care what happened at the north Richmond bridge but the flood in my backyard WAS directly related to the dam. If the dam had been 80% not 97% the 2.2 mtrs of water I had I most likely wouldn’t have had. The last one had the idiots spilling between 300-350 gig, on the big day they spilled at 400 gig and I went 1.95 under. The report from the early 90’s flood even said poor dam management and a king high tide was responsible then and called for better waterway management

So this guy thinks it’s better to flood thousands of houses because there’s caves with rock art in them what a load of shit

Water officials have said (on public forums) that Waragamba will never be used as flood mitigation damn, even if raised.

Suzette Lee Turner

Perhaps you need to take advice from the experts eg Professors Brian Cook and Tim Werner (Uni of Melbourne), professor Dale Dominey-Howes (Uni of Sydney) Professor Elizabeth Mossop (UTS), Professor Jamie Pittock (ANU) et al, all of whom say that raising the dam wall is not the answer!

There are 150000 people living in the valley 5000 of them are affected by flood waters, how about looking after the 150000 by putting your effort into a flood free road through the Hawkesbury . You have a great opportunity with the new bridge at nth Richmond to go from the pub at Nth Richmond to Richmond and from the RAAF base to the Jim Anderson bridge and create a flood free access for the 150000 at much less cost. This would be a better way to spend NSW Government money than on rasing the dam wall which the Government's own report says wont work.

Climate Change ( yeah, what ever. Load of Greenies shite) has nothing to do with the cycle of weather patterns! Uni professors are paid to come up with this type of crap. Weather goes in cycles! Always has,always will! This is nothing new! Raise the wall to become a storage and flood mitigation dam, and dredge the river!

Nathan really? Please get up to speed. You are falling for the Liberal party line hook, line and sinker. The EIS is full of bias. Lower the current dam 12m and serve your community NOW. I think you are a dedicated councillor but your blinkers need to come off. Sit down with Stuart Kahn.

I am all for better flood mitigation, but I am personally concerned that not enough consideration has been given to what would happen when flooding events occur in quick succession as they have done in this year, and many other times throughout recorded history. If the dam wall were to be raised and then filled, I assume the draw down back to a normal level would take months without causing significant flooding downstream. If there were to be another flooding event in quick succession the mitigating affect of a raised wall would potentially be severely compromised and have very little, if any impact on flooding downstream. Given the frequency such events have occurred in the past, coupled the fact that other tributaries often contribute far greater than the dam to Hawkesbury valley flooding, I’m not convinced the enormous expense and environmental impact involved with raising the wall would be justified.

More dams is the answer not raising the current one. There are sights that a dam or dams can be built...that is the answer.

Councillor Nathan Zamprogno since you only provided one PDF link regarding the raising of the dam wall. I went and found the relevant documents for the proposal. The information that I requested along with others, but you failed to provide the link to interested parties. Warragamba Dam was never meant to be a flood mitigation dam. As I have said to you several times in these posts that 5 Rivers and Creeks flow into the Hawkesbury Valley below Warragamba dam wall. These rivers and Tributaries all contribute to flooding of the Hawkesbury Valley. Increased development in Northwestern Western and Southwestern Sydney has allowed for faster run off to flow into these Rivers and Creeks. The message does not seem to be sinking in regarding this fact. I want to know who will have blood on their hands if the Dam wall is raised and it fails? How many hundreds of thousands of people will die? As there is no way that people will be able to be evacuated in time from the following suburbs: Wallacia Glenmore Rise Glenmore Ridge South Penrith Penrith Emu Plains Riverside Estate Kingswood Agnes Banks Plus a whole hose of Suburbs that will be in the path of the water. For anyone who is interested here is the proposal documents regarding Warragamba Dam. Also there is a video at the bottom of this post stating Warragamba Dam is not a flood mitigation dam. www.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/major-projects/projects/warragamba-dam-raising www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v-cz7fjtLk

Out of curiosity which councillors if any apposed any action?

Wrong way, need to go higher

Councillor Nathan Zamprogno I have not been able to locate the exact reason why the insurance council of Australia is against raising the dam wall? Also this concerns me, NSW Emergency Services Minister David Elliott says raising the Warragamba Dam wall could pave the way for the release of more land for development in Sydney’s north-west. Why would we raise the wall to allow this and have the problem reoccur?

Hold the development body accountable too bad if it costs them extra to avoid an existing home

Councillor Nathan Zamprogno should read a little more.

Sorry...but the cost to raise the wall is is Totally over the top to protect HOUSES BUILT ON A FLOOD PLAIN.. The modelling will be wrong The cost will blow up & up & up

I in no way support the raising of the damn wall. Reducing the damn levels when predicted rainfall is expected, which may cause damage. I absolutely support

What is the Hawkesbury City Council and NSW Liberal Party doing right now to mitigate against the next flood event? (Hand wringing, empathy and philosophising does not count).

Pre-release is not the same as lowering the water level.

Prof Pittock makes a lot of sense but vested interests won't listen.

Don’t worry nothing will happen with any of it because our government is so gutless and useless at actually doing anything proactive. They think it’s ok to just throw some token disaster money at it and show up for a few interviews in the disaster zone to pretend they actually give a crap! Which the don’t really. I’m totally over hoping that anything constructive will actually ever happen. Too green, woke and spineless to stand up and make a decision the lot of them!

Adjusting the nominal "full" level based on measurable scientific data makes a lot of sense. The fact that much of the flood water enters Nepean tributaries downstream of the dam means that other amelioration actions also need to be looked at. Do you know if anybody has looked seriously at options such as notched (flow volume restricting) weirs on tributaries and overflow bypass tunnels on the winding parts of the Hawkesbury that restrict the ability of the water to escape to the ocean? www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=109741985136880&id=108055818638830

Or you could create a secondary dam and dredge the river. Raising the dam wall is one solution, but not the only solution.

Nathan and Mary great representatives for Hawkesbury..thank you both for your hard work and efforts.

Councils re flooding also are approving development too easily. Need to draw new zones and push back against the developer machine.

Appreciate that you are transparent and report back. thaqnk you.

Great summary. Thanks Nathan.

E scooters are fantastic. We have them in Darwin. Such a great way to get around!

can we get those e scooters approved for use in the Hawkesbury please ?

Nathan it has been an horrendous year for flooding in the Hawkesbury. There has been a lot of banter about raising the Warragamba Dam wall. In my opinion this will not prevent flooding in the Hawkesbury. The farmers have lost a lot of their land which has now silted up the river. Dredge the river and return the soil to the land owners. Better water release management of the Dam would prevent the flood reaching the height it did and the excessive quick rise and flow. That is my input.

Raise the dam wall🤦🏽‍♀️yes so when something goes wrong there is twice as much water and no more floods plains for it to go because councils/ governments allowed for it to be overdeveloped.

Thanks for the video Councillor Nathan Zamprogno hopefully we can all stand together with governments to proactively do something to better manage these natural disasters that are becoming more and more frequent!! To our SES volunteers thankyou and thankyou.

Raising the wall would not have affected this outcome as the amount of water that fell would have exceeded to new height. Also has anyone seen a study that would show the environmental impact/destruction caused upstream from capturing the amount of water the new height would allow? Also is it not true that raising the height of the dam wall would allow some areas in the hawkesbury to have their flood status rezoned meaning anyone with certain areas of land in the hawkesbury would benefit from this by suddenly allowing them to develop these areas?

Thanks for a very informative video and getting out to see how the LGA you represent has been affected. I grew up in Oakville on Saunders road and was there for the 90’s floods we never had water in the house but looks like it may have happened this flood. I now live in Windsor and many of my friends have been affected by the floods. I don’t believe raising the dam wall solves the problem. I think the wall being raised is about having more water for Sydney to use and does not provide protections to the flood plain. But in this great democracy we can have differing opinions. Thanks again for the updatr

So.. what can the council do to prevent development on the Blacktown side of the floodplain.. The rate at which the river rose was fast, more houses roofs and pipes will only increase that in the future. Less ground for water to soak into has obvious run off implications. Hope you read this and take up the fight.

Thanks for another update on what Council is doing throughout this Councillor Nathan Zamprogno. It’s good to see some councillors continuing to support our community outside of the election cycle.

Leave the warragamba dam at the same height and build a few dams further down the river and have those as the water regulator to allow a more controlled relief

Instead of spruiking for raising the Dam wall... hows about you use your so called influence to stop the over population and building in the Hawkesbury. As councillor you should have first hand knowledge that we do not have the infrastructure for this.

Sorry but even raising the wall will not stop flooding or the severity if you raise it 5mtr that would be the equivalent of what 2 Sydney harbours not to mention damage to the wildlife.When it fills at 97% again and we have the same rain front we got now we will still flood the same result if not worse. So sorry but it won't fix flooding.

So sad to see the community like this. Stay strong & safe everyone!

This is a wonderful documentary record. Please give to the library.

Sorry but by wanting to raise the dam wall you have just lost my & my families vote. You need to listen to the people & many people are saying No!!!

Thank you Nathan for a comprehensive coverage of our local community. 🙏🙏 Prays and hugs to all who have been devastated with These floods once again....

Unfortunately the severity of this flood in particular is a result of poor decisions not environmental conditions. The management of the dam state publically they are only interested in providing Sydneys water supply and not what happens down stream. This was evident when the first day of rain the dam was at 97% capacity not 91% as they are allowed to go. The Hawkesbury didn't get enough rain to cause this much damage. Yes the dam would have eventually spilled from the rain in the catchment but spreading out the water flow would have mitigated much of the disaster. And don't get me started on the incompetence of the engineers and those who believe that new estates have no impact on localised flooding.

Thankyou for documenting this disaster. I saw you in Thompson Square yesterday afternoon talking with a couple. Now I wish I'd interrupted. Pleased you were getting around the district seeing and hearing people's experiences first hand, and now sharing a record of places many of us couldn't get to.

Thank You for footage. Heartbreaking for My family out there. There must be a solution to prevent future floods. It’s a worry

Thank you Councillor Nathan, sadly you’ll never please everyone, I do hope that something can be worked out sooner rather than later as so many people are over this whole issue. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Sadly, Council should never have approved residential areas in flood zones - however, while Greedy developers exist & are in bed with Councillors & Politicians uneducated home buyers will suffer….🤦🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️😢

Well done Nathan - thank you 👏👏

Yet council and residents continue to build more and more homes and infrastructure adding to the problem. And clearly If the flood free route was flooded the planning of water run off from new developments wasn’t well planned at all. We have a massive amount of land where new infrastructure and residents can go with minimal adverse impact. Instead Government, Councils and alike haemorrhage millions cramming crap into the cities due to greed.

Stand by and make sure it doesn't happen again by piping the water out beforehand with the plan of many years ago. Do something not after the fact

Kelly Gardiner this is a good video of what’s happening on the other side of the river.

Great photos showing our poor community Nathan

Well i home you going to ask the harsd questions to why they did not do control water let go when we had good weather instead it let go when there no where for the water to go i now back to step one in my place as i spent almost 30 thousand last flood fixing my ace up and replacing lots of stuff now it all gone to waste as i got flooded worste this time and lost all downstair again