Giving a dam

The government also believes an even larger dam wall would allow developers to build thousands of hectares of urban sprawl across western Sydney floodplains. What they are not highlighting is the vast increase in revenue which might also cover the cost of extending Warragamba’s wall.

Both the Government and property developers think that raising the dam height will allow thousands of houses built on floodplains to be safe from flooding, whilst not appreciating that floods are natural phenomenons which happen regardless of dams. Remember the 2011 Queensland floods?

There is little exactitude in forecasting whether sufficient high rainfall may occur in this area, endangering civilisation without the protection of additional wall height.

It also is similarly uncertain that easily-damaged parts of the environment would be affected if such a rare event did happen, because both downstream flooding and upstream inundation are equally dependent on a weather event outside human control.

In 2012, Infrastructure NSW said a study it commissioned found that a one-in-1000-year flood in the area is possible, meaning that the welfare of residents and workers is one part of a contentious decision the state government must make in the face of fierce opposition by protestors.

 Some dissenters claim that the massive catchment increase in heavy rain with a wall height being mooted would destroy sensitive vegetation, as well as sacred Aboriginal traditional upstream sites. 

A proposal to raise the Warragamba dam wall would flood 4,700 hectares of the Blue Mountains world heritage area, destroying more than 50 recognised Aboriginal heritage sites, and wiping out pockets of threatened plant species, they say.

Indigenous protesters say that WaterNSWclaims that it is going to save more sites downstream, but that a different organisational culture overlooks the appreciation that everything behind the dam wall belongs to the Gundungurra and Dharawal people, and everything that’s downstream belongs to the Darug.

This statement concerns me a little regarding whether the mentioned areas existed as discrete tribal zones before the dam was even built, and also seems at variance with indigenous belief that land does not belong to them – they belong to it.

Among the sites at risk behind the dam wall are rock art sites, burial sites, and ochre deposits in a cave on the waterline, all of which are at risk of being submerged fourteen metres.

Infrastructure NSW  has said it is still assessing the impact on these Aboriginal heritage sites.

It seems reasonable to propose that plant species threatened by flooding could be moved before any wall height increase, similar to back in Warragamba’s planning days when the authorities moved in, and the township of Burragorang Valley was demolished to make way for the building of the dam. The government acquired every property and bulldozed every structure.