This Wednesday evening an important community meeting will take place. Convened by the Hawkesbury Business Group the purpose is to put the issue of flood mitigation back on the radar of government for the people who live and trade on the Hawkesbury Nepean catchment.
Venue: Windsor RSL
Date: This Wednesday 4th November
Time: 7pm
Here are some facts:
When the NSW Labor government was elected in March 2023 they promised to ditch a key safety initiative – the long-overdue raising of Warragamba dam. They replaced it with a nebulously defined program that involved levees to safeguard places like Pitt Town and McGraths Hill. They promised to complete that task within two years of election.It is now nearly four years later, and no levees have been built.
The NSW Government completed a Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Adaptation Plan over a year ago which may provide crucial guidance on the kinds of capital works which will make our community safer but they have refused to release it or to answer media questions about it. The NSW Reconstruction Authority has upgraded its estimate of the number of people who would need to be evacuated in the case of a bad flood to 234,000 people.I am told that the sponsors of the meeting will be advancing their own idea about a capital program to tunnel through the chokepoints of the river at Sackville in an effort to increase flood-time flows.
I do not know whether this idea is the solution we are looking for, but I do agree that it is worth further exploration because we cannot do nothing when our community faces such an existential risk.
In this video I discuss the upcoming meeting and those risks with local planner, Troy Myers.