This project will be damaging to important natural areas including habitat for threatened species.

I STRONGLY OBJECT TO THE PROPOSAL TO RAISE THE HEIGHT OF WARRAGAMBA DAM !!!!
* As a Blue Mountains man with Indigenous Heritage, I am disgusted with the NSW Govt's proposal to raise the height of the Warragamba Dam. This will further eradicate our Indigenous Culture by flooding many cultural sites. Surely this has to stop.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH !!!!!!!
* I am a lover of our native bush & it's native residents - the flooding will cause further damage to our already hurting land. Many thousands of native animals and plants - and many endangered - or 'CRITICALLY ENDANGERED' - (such as the Regent Honeyeatyer, which will lose valuable breeding habitat) will be lost forever if this proposal goes ahead.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH !!!!!!

I STRONGLY OBJECT TO THE PROPOSAL TO RAISE THE HEIGHT OF THE WARRAGAMBA DAM !!!!!!!

PLEASE LISTEN & ACT !!!!!!!!!

WaterNSW, an agency of the NSW Government, has released an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) proposing to raise the wall of the Warragamba Dam. Their justification for the project is that raising the dam wall is required to reduce the risk of future flooding to residents and businesses across Western Sydney. This is simply not the case.
The project rationale is deeply flawed, with nearly half the floodwaters that have historically impacted the floodplain coming from rivers outside the Warragamba catchment.
Raising the dam wall will encourage further ill-advised development in vulnerable areas without providing any guarantee of future protection.
What we need is better urban planning, not short-sighted fixes that will only encourage development in flood prone areas.
Intolerable environmental impacts
The World Heritage listed Blue Mountains National Parks have been given the highest possible international status and protection in recognition of the area’s extraordinary biodiversity and ecological integrity.
The Commonwealth and NSW Governments made a commitment to future generations to protect the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area forever. This is the last place that any government should sacrifice to enable further expansion of floodplain development.
Raising the Warragamba Dam wall will inflict terrible damage on the environmental and cultural values of the catchment. It will decimate 5,700 hectares of National Parks, 1,300 hectares of World Heritage Area, more than 60 kilometres of wilderness rivers and thousands of Aboriginal sites and places of cultural significance. The area that will be destroyed contains some of the best remaining grassy woodland ecosystem in NSW, complete with healthy populations of dingo, quoll, woodland birds and many other native species.
The rising water will drive threatened species into extinction, including NSW’s rarest bird, the Regent Honeyeater.
Australia is a signatory to the World Heritage Convention and required to do everything in its powers to protect the ecological integrity of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. This proposal falls far short of that obligation, and if the EIS is approved it will confirm our growing international reputation as environmental vandals.
No consent has been obtained from the Gundungurra Traditional Owners for the work that will significantly impact their cultural heritage.
Totally inadequate environmental impact assessment
The purpose of raising the dam wall is to hold water at a level up to 17 metres higher than the present dam. Even if the water is only held at these elevated levels for a few months, the unavoidable reality is that the habitats, flora, fauna, cultural sites and soils within the inundation zone will be devastated.
Despite the EIS having been in preparation for more than 5 years, the environmental and cultural surveys on which it relies are woefully inadequate. The EIS relies upon biodiversity and cultural surveys conducted before the unprecedented wildfires of 2019/20, which burnt 81% of the Greater Blue Mountains. Those fires changed the face of the Blue Mountains and drove many species to the brink of local extinction. It is not sufficient to do a ‘desktop’ analysis of the impacts of the fires on the project area, a new survey is needed.
The Commonwealth Department of Environment and the International Council on Monuments and Sites have both pointed out very serious failings in the assessment of the impact on the cultural heritage of the Gundungurra traditional owners.
The proposal relies upon the payment of biodiversity offsets to mitigate the irreparable environmental damage to the biodiversity of this unique and internationally significant area.
Calculations based on the NSW Government’s own biodiversity laws and offsets trading scheme suggests that the total cost of biodiversity offsets will be around $2 billion.
Shockingly, rather than disclose the true cost to NSW citizens and taxpayers, the EIS does not calculate the biodiversity offset liability for the project.
The wrong time and the wrong place
NSW is still reeling from the 2019/20 mega-fires, record levels of land clearing and a species extinction crisis. If there is any time and any place where the protection of nature must be prioritised, surely it is in now in World Heritage listed National Parks?
Has the NSW Government learnt nothing from the desecration of Juunkan Gorge about the importance of protecting Aboriginal cultural heritage?
Aboriginal cultural heritage, National Parks, World Heritage and threatened species need protection, not destruction.

I wish to express my strong objection to the raising of Warragamba Dam. Raising the dam will inundate National Park and World Heritage areas as well as aboriginal sacred sites. These natural and indigenous heritage areas, so close to Sydney, deserve protection for future generations. There are endangered species that will be impacted by the dam raising. The Kowmung River, which flows from its source to where it joins Cox's River, flows unimpeded. The lower reaches of the river would be destroyed if the dam raising proceeds. I was fortunate to visit the Kowmung many times and have enjoyed its beauty and serenity. The Kowmung is a wild river that should never be flooded. Other rivers will also be impacted, taking away habitat and indigenous cultural heritage.

This is a World Heritage Area and should be further protected. There should not be destruction proposed for an ecologically pristine area that has been given World Heritage status. As a first world country that is a signatory to the World Heritage Convention, we should be doing more to protect World Heritage areas. Destroying World Heritage area by flooding it, would show us as a State and Country as poor stewards of the natural areas we have previously chosen to protect.

Raising the dam to protect a flood plain is a short sighted and flawed solution to this issue. Once the dam is full, the next large rain event will cause flooding. The only way to avoid damaging houses in flood plains is remove them. Development in flood plains has been a boon for developers as they provide large areas of relatively flat land to subdivide. Once the subdivisions are complete, the developers walk away leaving residents and government with the costs associated with flooding. Given that nearly half of the catchment for the Hawkesbury flood plain is not upstream from Warragamba Dam, the dam raising solution isn't going to be an effective solution. Also rain event intensity and frequency is becoming less predictable and more extreme. There was recently three 100-year rain events in Texas, USA in 5 years. This is a sign of things to come with climate change. The solution is not building the flood plain.

The study for this project is flawed and needs to be revisited. The devastating bushfires since the study was carried out are but one sign that the natural environment needs to be cared for and protected. The cultural and biodiversity studies need to be redone to take into account the impact of the fires. The cultural impacts need to be taken seriously and completely revisited.

Thank you,

Bruce Fenton

With this submission, I would like to express my opposition to Warragamba Dam raising currently proposed by WaterNSW.
The Blue Mountains have always been a place where I would go for a nature break, a place where I can still see and feel the power of nature, as well as its resilience to changes and threats brought by human activities. However, during the bushfires in 2019 and 2020, 81% of the Blue Mountains Heritage Area were devastated. While human societies can build back after a flood within a short amount of time, nature takes years to recover from those disasters, and may never go back to its initial stage.
The current proposal of raising Warragamba Dam predicts that when an extreme flood happens, the upstream inundation depth would increase to 10.3 metres above full storage level, and this for an additional 10 days compared to 4 days at the current level of the dam. Knowing this, can we really put a monetary and human loss value on what will be flooded? Can we simply buy biodiversity credits to offset the damage, which will most likely happen within the next 10 years? My answer is no and here is why:

The Blue Mountains World Heritage area is not just a world class National Park, in 2000 it was inscribed on UNESCO’s prestigious World Heritage List in recognition of the Blue Mountains Outstanding Universal value for the whole of mankind. Raising the Warragamba dam wall and consequent damage to natural and cultural values would be a clear breach of these undertakings and Australia’s obligations under the World Heritage Convention. 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.

The project objective is clearly not to protect this natural ecosystem. Its proposed plan (done by SMEC) cannot be accepted as a basis for further decision-making by the Minister of Planning for the following points:

Only 27% of the impact area was assessed for Aboriginal Cultural Heritage. Over 1541 identified cultural heritage sites would be inundated by the Dam proposal. Gundungurra Traditional Owners have not given Free, Prior and Informed Consent for the Dam proposal to proceed.
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.


Another concern, which the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment should consider, is the quantity of material and energy required to build the new structure. NABERS recently announced that embodied energy of buildings will be part of their certification.
But why does a project like this one do not have to estimate the amount of greenhouse gas it will emit? My calculations based on the quantities available in the reports reveal that this project will emit 169028 tonnes of CO2e just from electricity, concrete, steel and fuel usage. This is the equivalent of 10,000 Australian yearly emissions (based on 17 T CO2e/capita). On top of this, it would consume 183 ML of water, which cover 73.2 Olympic pools or the water need of almost 1 million Australians. How would this be paid for? Why is this not clearly stated and regulated?

Going a bit deeper, this dam raising is proposed to protect the population downstream against flood. However, those extreme floods are themselves caused by a disrupted water cycle and climate system, which are themselves caused by human activities generating a surplus of greenhouse gas.

Finally, I was not satisfied by the quality of the comparisons between the different available solutions, other than raising the dam. 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. The rise of the dam will simply put a bandage on a larger problem, which is the continuous expansion of properties on flooding zones. By continuing to develop downstream, it reduces the ability of the soil to capture floodwater and regenerate the aquifer, which will in the long term remove any natural protection against both flood and drought.

With this submission, I am opposing the Warragamba Dam raising project, whose objective is the following: ‘Reduce risk to life and property damage downstream in the valley by raising Warragamba Dam wall’. Indeed the rise of the dam is just a short term solution with long term environmental, social and economic negative impacts, upstream and downstream, as explained in the above paragraphs.

I strongly oppose the proposal to raise Warragamba Dam due to the project’s unacceptable potential impacts on the environment including to the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and threatened species.

The draft EIS concludes that the project poses potential significant impacts to contemporary breeding habitat for the Regent Honeyeater that “cannot be avoided or minimised.” The Regent Honeyeater is listed as Critically Endangered at both a state and federal level, with as few as 350 individuals remaining in the wild.  Modelling by BirdLife Australia suggested that up to 50% of contemporary Regent Honeyeater foraging and breeding habitat was burnt in the 2019/20 bushfires. Protecting remaining unburnt breeding habitat is of the highest conservation priority. There are only a handful of contemporary breeding sites for Regent Honeyeater and during the assessment of the project a total of twenty one (21) Regent Honeyeaters, including active nests, were recorded within the impact area. Any breeding habitat is considered habitat critical for survival of the species under the National Recovery Plan for Regent Honeyeater and it states “It is essential that the highest level of protection is provided to these areas and that enhancement and protection measures target these productive sites”. The destruction or degradation of a contemporary breeding site for Regent Honeyeaters would have dire consequences for the species as a whole.

The destruction and degradation of breeding habitat for Regent Honeyeaters is incongruous with the time and money that the Federal and NSW Governments have invested into the recovery program, including the Regent Honeyeater Captive Breeding and Release program. It is unacceptable and inconsistent with the National Recovery Plan for any avoidable loss or degradation of breeding habitat to occur.

I strongly oppose the Project’s offset strategy for the Regent Honeyeater.

Offsets are rarely an appropriate response to proposed biodiversity loss and especially for critical habitat for the survival of a species, in this case breeding habitat for the Critically Endangered Regent Honeyeater. There is no evidence that breeding habitat for Regent Honeyeaters can be successfully offset and any offsets would be unlikely to provide direct benefits for both the local affected population and the species.

I feel there has been too much focus on the benefits to lower hawkwsbury residents, who have purchased land in known flood plains. However, I feel the actual focus is really on preparing for addition of downstream land development.
Given bombshells this week with Maguire m9 orbital land banking revelations, and Ayres working relationship with him, this project should be shelved for the interim. I also feel that with ayres in deputy premier role currently, he will be able to push this project through.
I don't feel the public yet know the reason for the incessant 'push' for this project to be approved, and given evidence of liberal state government mishandling of power, feel this, and other projects of state and national significance should be shelved until elections are complete.

To whom it may concern.
If approved this project will significantly damage 5,700 hectares of National Parks, 1,300 hectares of World Heritage Area, more than 60 kilometres of wilderness rivers and thousands of Aboriginal sites and places of cultural significance.

The project rationale is deeply flawed, with nearly half the floodwaters that have historically impacted the floodplain coming from rivers outside the Warragamba catchment.

Australia is a signatory to the World Heritage Convention and required to do everything in its powers to protect the ecological integrity of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. This proposal falls far short of that obligation, and if the EIS is approved it will confirm our growing international reputation as environmental vandals.

No consent has been obtained from the Gundungurra Traditional Owners for the work that will significantly impact their cultural heritage.

Thank you
Glen Kraemer

Hi,
I strongly object to the proposal of raising the Warragamba Dam wall for the following reasons
1. Rain won't stop - The dam wall will only work if water is released at the right time. This means a decision needs to be made when to release the excess water before it gets too full. This will be difficult to do, as shown when the water wasn't release early enough in 2021 to stop flooding.
2. There are many other rivers flowing into the Nepean/Hawkesbury River that aren't attached to the Warragamba Dam - Nepean River, Grose River, Colo River, McDonald River, etc. and raising the dam wall won't make any difference to flooding from these rivers. See the State Emergency Services video on the flooding of the Hawkesbury/Nepean River for a description of this.
3. Insurance companies have withdrawn support for the Dam wall raising. They have recommended to use the funds to purchase flood prone land to reduce property damage.
4. It would be better to have this flood prone land as productive farming that can use the nutrients from flood land to feed Sydney. It is easily replaced if flooded.
5. The cost to the ecosystem when the land behind the dam is flooded, that is, a raised wall will kill a massive amount of flora and fauna. This is basically land clearing and habitat loss and is one of the highest key threatening processes including to the valuable Koala Habitat.
6. The above point is in direct contravention of the commitment by Matt Kean to have zero extinctions. The scale of land inundation will add to extinctions especially local extinctions. This includes valuable Koalas.
7. The inundation will also destroy timeless and irreplaceable Aboriginal heritage.
8. The inundation will also destroy the Aboriginal storyline associated with the rivers.
7. The extra land inundation will also flood existing firetrails that will reduce fire protection activities like Hazard Reductions.
9. The raising of the Dam wall will create a false security and lead to decisions to release more land for housing therefore creating a great risk to lives and property.

I am most concerned the effect of raising the wall of Warragamba Dam would have irreversible and drastic effects on the biodiversity of the area. In particular I believe the foraging and breeding grounds of the Regent Honeyeater, an Endangered Species, would be dramatically reduced. I believe this threat is totally unacceptable due to the recent impact of bushfires on the species’s habitat.
I am also concerned that land and artifacts belonging to local indigenous people would be inundated should this extremely unpopular proposal be permitted in a World Heritage Area.