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Why Raising the Warragamba Dam Wall Raises Serious Concerns

Episode:
12
Why Raising the Warragamba Dam Wall Raises Serious Concerns

Guests:
Bob Debus, Former NSW Minister for the Environment and Chair, Colong Foundation for Wilderness

Former NSW Minister for the Environment Bob Debus unpacks the deeply flawed case for raising the Warragamba Dam wall, challenging the claim that a higher wall would meaningfully protect flood-prone communities in Western Sydney. The conversation covers the 6000 hectares of World Heritage listed national park at risk, the more than 1500 Gundungurra cultural sites under threat, and a pointed question about whether State, Federal, and international legal protections can simply be set aside when they become inc

Show Notes

In this episode, I speak with the Honourable Bob Debus, former Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Minister for the Arts for the Blue Mountains electorate and Chairperson for the Colong Foundation For Wilderness. We dive into a discussion about the proposal to raise the Warragamba Dam wall, and highlight the flawed rationale that a higher dam wall will protect residents in high flood risk areas in Western Sydney. Raising the dam wall will flood 6000 hectares of UN world heritage-listed national park and put at risk many threatened species. The area is also of high cultural significance for the Gundungurra people with over 1500 sites threatened by rising floodwaters.

We explore all these concerns and note that much of this landscape has the highest level of formal legal protection available for endangered ecosystems in Australia – can we just disregard the State, Federal and International obligations that were put in place to ensure actions like raising the dam wall would never go ahead?

Resources:

What are we doing about this proposal?

The ARRC have taken a few steps to raise our concerns and take action to prevent the raising of the Warragamba Dam wall:

  • We have written a letter to Minister Rob Stokes asking that the exhibition period for the Environmental Impact Statement be extended, as it is large document with not enough time for review.
  • We are submitting EIS submissions, as an organisation and as individual team members.
  • We have published an article further detailing the impact the raised wall is likely to have on the residents of Western Sydney, the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, including hundreds of Aboriginal sites and places of cultural significance, and our threatened native biodiversity. If you find this article helpful, we recommend you share it with your networks.