In 2014 Rous County Council (RCC) adopted its Future Water Strategy which recommended detailed investigations to assess the suitability of increased use of groundwater as a new water source, and if groundwater was not suitable, investigate complementary options such as water reuse and desalination.
After completion of this investigation Rous produced the original Future Water Project 2060 which did not prioritise groundwater use, reuse of already available water or building a desalination plant/s.
Instead it chose another option – the 50 gigalitre Dunoon Dam, with the concept design indicating an initial capital cost of approx. $220 million.
“In considering options for the future, Rous County Council conducted extensive assessments to weigh up environment, social and economic impacts. The result of these assessments indicate the Dunoon Dam is the preferred long-term water supply option when compared to demand management and water conservation, groundwater sources and water re-use”.
It is worth noting that the proposed Dunoon Dam would be the second dam on Rocky Creek thus further fragmenting this watercourse. The first water storage is Rocky Creek Dam which will continue to operate if the Dunoon Dam was built. Rocky Creek Dam does not have an outlet structure so it does not provide releases for downstream flows. [NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, 2020]
By 2020 this incredibly flawed second dam plan still relied on the widely discredited ‘offset’ scheme as a workaround for the widespread level of environmental destruction, significant biodiversity & species local population loss and, for the drowning of land sacred to the Widjabul Wia-bal People and the desecration of highly significant cultural sites.
Rous authorized preliminary investigation of the Dunoon Dam project in mid-2020 allocating a $100,000 operating budget.
However, the Widjabul Wia-bal, local residents in Lismore Shire and many people in the three other shires within Rous County Council (Byron, Ballina & Richmond Valley) remained concerned with Rous’ choice – the Future Water Project 2060 Public Exhibition Outcomes revealed that 90% of the 1,298 submissions received by 9 September 2020 expressed concerns about the Dunoon Dam proposal.
In March 2021 Rous was reconsidering its earlier Dunoon Dam decision and by 21 July it had voted 5 to 3 to remove the Dunoon Dam from its Future Water Project 2060. At that time a second public exhibition from 1 April to 24 May 2021, this time of the revised Future Water Project 2060, was put in place which resulted in an RCC digital file of supporting submissions 1,754 pages long and confirmed that voiced public opinion was still against building the Dunoon Dam.
By 16 December 2021 Rous County Council had authorised “the General Manager to cease all work on the Dunoon Dam and provide a report on the orderly exit from Dunoon Dam as an option in the future water project, including revocation of zoning entitlements and disposal of land held for the purpose of the proposed Dunoon Dam”.
There the matter should have rested, but after the December 2021 local government elections there was a changing of the guard at Rous Water and six of the eight current sitting RCC councillors are pro-dam.
This led to the unedifying sight on 16 February 2022, of Rous County Council by a vote of 6 to 2 vote reinserting the Dunoon Dam proposal into the revised Future Water Project 2060. No genuine forewarning of what that first RCC meeting of 2022 would contain, no prior consultation with Widjabul Wia-ba elders on the Item 12.1 motion, no community consultation.
The community scrambled to respond. So on the day RCC did hear objections to Item 12.1 from Hugh Nicholson, a previous Chair of Rous Country Council and Friends of the Koala representative Ros Irwin.
A young Widjabul Wia-ba woman, Skye Roberts, addressed the councillors as a “custodian” of the land. She spoke with conviction, determination and, clearly informed all present that: the proposed dam was sited within the large tract of land between three ancient mountains and that land was “sacred land” to all the Widjabul Wia-ba; this included Channon Gorge, the waters that ran through it and the wider dam site; the stone burial mounds which would be submerged by dam waters were part of the circle of cultural connection between land and people; men’s places & women’s places were on land to be flooded; and that land connects to living culture.
The message she carried for her grandmother and mother fell on predominately deaf ears and it was ‘ugly Australia’ which voted the dam back into future planning on that Wednesday in February.
Rous County Council already has before it the Ainsworth Heritage “Dunoon Dam: Preliminary Cultural Heritage Impact Assessment for Rous Water, May 2013” which can be read in digital form or downloaded from:
https://issuu.com/jwtpublishing/docs/ainsworth-heritage-preliminary-cultural-heritage-i.
It also has before it the SMEC “Dunoon Dam Terrestrial Ecology Impact Assessment, Prepared for Rous Water November 2011”. An assessment of which can be found at:
https://waternorthernrivers.org/ecological-impact/
For a brief summary of some of the technical flaws in the Dunoon Dam preliminary investigation:
Dunoon Dam: 4 Risks & Considerations by Water Expert Professor Stuart White - Feb 2022
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