By Frances Kelly
SYDNEY — A Water Board proposal to raise Warragamba Dam in the Southern Blue Mountains could destroy vast tracts of pristine wilderness and encourage urban sprawl downstream.
The dam, which stands 100 metres high and serves 50% of the Hawkesbury Nepean catchment area, holds back the water which makes up Lake Burragorang. When the dam was originally constructed in the 1960s it drowned much of the region including the Burragorang valley.
In 1987, during extreme floods, the Warragamba Dam was declared unsafe. The state government released a discussion paper which looked at several options to solve this problem including, the construction of more dams, increasing the dam's current storage and building a spillway around it. The spillway was the preferred option.
In February the government announced that Warragamba Dam would be raised by a total of 36 metres above its present storage level; this would increase its storage capacity by 53%.
The Kowmung Committee, a coalition of environmental groups, opposes the government's proposal. The committee draws its name from the Kowmung River, the largest wild river in the Blue Mountains which flows through the Kanangra Boyd National Park. The Kowmung, and other major rivers upstream of the dam such as the Coxs, Nattai, Kedumba and Wollondilly, will be adversely affected by raising the Warragamba Dam.
According to Andrew Cox, the Committee's president, "more than 100 kilometres of scenic rivers will be effected and national parks and wilderness will be turned into bare and unsightly moonscapes if Warragamba is raised. Nobody will want to see or visit what remains".
Environmentalists are concerned with a number of aspects including: the fragmentation of national parks and the degradation of the world-famous, world heritage Blue Mountains; the loss of bushwalking areas and historic campsites; a reduction in biodiversity such as the rare and endangered Camdem White Gum; and the loss of Aboriginal heritage areas.
At a 250-strong public meeting in Katoomba on August 11, Milo Dunphy, director of the Total Environment Centre, pointed out that while the Tasmanian government considers draining Lake Pedder, "in NSW we continue in the worst possible tradition of the hydro engineers. It's not only that the wilderness will be reduced in size, and in part submerged by an even greater desert of water, the worst crime of these engineers is that they want to take away a major slab of our history".
Dunphy also condemned the secrecy surrounding the Fahey government's decisions; there has been no public documents discussing alternatives to raising the dam.
Cox believes that despite the Water Board's publicly declared reasons for raising the dam — safety and flood mitigation — its additional agenda is increased water storage. He told Green Left Weekly that "flood mitigation will drown all the vegetation on the river banks and cause sedimentation in the valleys. If it is used for water storage, the impact will be far greater".
As expected, the Waterboard's project manager for the Warragamba Dam, David Snape emphasised flood mitigation and said that the benefits of raising the dam far outweighed the environmental damage it will cause. He said work is being done to increase Sydney's water supply and that the decision on whether to raise the Warragamba Dam or an alternative dam, such as Welcome Reef on the Shoalhaven River, will be announced shortly.
Upstream from the dam will not be the only casualty of the flooding. The increase in the water storage and flood mitigation will open up the land downstream to further urban sprawl.
Keith Muir from the Colong Foundation for Wilderness believes raising Warragamba is definitely part of the NSW government's plans. He told Green Left that "planning officers of the Hawkesbury City Council have confirmed that the urban expansion of Richmond and Windsor is at present limited to only a few hundred lots and they understand the dam will release large tracts of presently flood-affected land for urban development.
"The raising of the Warragamba Dam wall can be described as an engineer-driven real estate boom. Flood-affected areas will now be freed for urban expansion and environmental degradation. Any gains in public health and safety made with the Warragamba dam will be rapidly eaten away by urban sprawl. We are building an enormous dam to supply water for a real estate boom."
According to Dunphy "councils downstream are considering what areas they can release for sub-division. They just got to the point where they realised Sydney should never have any further subdivision because it couldn't afford it firstly because of air pollution, secondly because of water pollution and thirdly because of the infrastructure costs. But now it's on again because of this dam proposal."
The Kowmung Committee is calling for work on the Warragamba Dam's environmental impact statement to be immediately halted. Cox told Green Left that the preferred alternatives was to locate the spillway around the dam as proposed in 1987. This, he said, will not cause significant damage to the national parks. He also believes that the Waterboard should implement a range of flood management strategies including preventing development in flood-prone areas.
Cox also said that the Waterboard should go on an intensive campaign aimed at reducing Sydney's water consumption.
The Kowmung Committee will continue to raise public awareness and is calling on people to write to Premier John Fahey and opposition leader Bob Carr urging them to look at alternatives to raising the Warragamba Dam.