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Macleay River flooding from the air
IMAGE: Macleay Argus, 21 March 2021
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In all but ruling out largescale buybacks of housing on NSW floodplains, a cynical Berejiklian Coalition Government is obviously
feeling safely protected by the
1979 Environmental Planning and Assessment Act s2.28 liability exemption clause.
As well reassured there will be no blowback on local government due to protections for councils and staff inserted by a predecessor, the Fahey Coalition Government, in the 1993 NSW Local
Government Act s731-s733 liability exemption clauses covering flooding and bushfires. Later helpfully reinforced by another predecessor the Keneally Labor Government in 2011, to cover
indemnity against lack of action or planning decisions taken that were known to increase risks of climate change impacts.
In between these two pieces of legislation, the Carr Labor Government even tossed in the 2002 Civil Liability Act to add to the circumstances in which liability could generally be avoided.
The
proof of the ease with which the Berejiklian Government is passing the buck back to homeowners for the past 74 years of urban development on floodplains is found in the current Coalition state government’s response
to widespread flooding in New South Wales during March 2021.
Vulnerable
communities in north-east NSW might think on the Berejiklian Government’s reluctance to seek genuine solutions to increasing floodplain risks due to climate change-induced alterations to seasonal
weather patterns, the contribution to flooding made by erosive wave patterns with rising seas and, natural disaster events.
The
Guardian,
10 April 2021:
Urban
planners and water scientists have urged the New South Wales
government to offer to buy back thousands of homes in flood-prone
areas of western Sydney, as overdevelopment sets a trajectory for the
number of uninsurable houses in the city to surge.
Infrastructure
NSW has acknowledged residential property buybacks would be
“effective” to mitigate flood risk in the Hawkesbury-Nepean
Valley and across western Sydney, but the government agency has said
such a scheme would incur “very significant social and economic
costs”.
The
call for buybacks, from the urban thinktank the Committee for Sydney,
followed floods in March that inundated parts of western Sydney after
Warragamba Dam spilled over, and wreaked havoc across NSW and
south-east Queensland.
By
Tuesday, the insurance bill for the floods had risen to $537m, from
35,845 claims, as affected residents continue to lodge damage with
their insurers.
The
Committee for Sydney’s resilience director, Sam Kernaghan, believes
the insurance bill for March’s floods will rise to $2bn and says it
will ultimately cost the NSW government too as it foots the bill for
emergency services and recovery relief services as insurer of last
resort.
The
committee has issued a plea for the state’s recovery and rebuilding
to seriously consider not “reestablishing homes, farms and
businesses in this increasingly hazard prone location”.
“The
bill will be enormous… [instead] we have an opportunity to use that
money differently to support western Sydney residents and businesses
for the long term,” the committee said, calling for the billions to
be spent rebuilding to focus on a voluntary home purchasing scheme
“that supports residents to move out of the way of the floods”.
“Funded
by state government, this scheme would provide a mechanism for
residents to sell flood risk properties to the government at market
rates,” the committee said, noting a similar scheme put in place
after the 2011 Queensland floods that saw Brisbane city council
purchase $35m in flood-affected land, with properties transformed
into parkland.
Kernaghan
believes there is a strong argument to buy back about 5,000 to 7,000
homes in western Sydney – not all of the 55,000 to 77,000 that are
estimated to need to evacuate during a one in 100-year flood event….
The
committee is also calling for more thorough mapping of flood plains
in Sydney to help long-term planning, as well as transferrable
development rights similar to the model used in Norfolk, Virginia –
a US city sinking more than 3.5mm a year – and strengthening
evacuation routes to help existing communities in the
Hawkesbury-Nepean floodplain…..
“If
nothing is done to address this escalating risk from extreme weather
and climate change, by 2100 Sydney will have a projected 91,000“uninsurable” addresses — the most of any city — with over
five times as many uninsurable properties in 2100 than in 2019,” he
said.
“Regardless
of what Sydney decides to do, the question before western Sydney is
this: do we really want to continue to put people in the flood plain?
Previous governments ignored the science, hoping it would be all
right. The result has been tragedy for thousands of people.
“The
recent floods should make it clear it is not responsible to put
people where they will be exposed to this level of harm ... It’s
time for Sydney to look at a long-term plan to reduce the cycle of
disaster.”
Dr
Ian Wright, a water scientist at Western Sydney University who
previously worked as a scientist for Sydney Water studying the Sydney
basin flows, also supports the concept of home buybacks.
Wright
has been a vocal part of the chorus of water scientists warning of the impact overdevelopment had on the recent floods.
As
large swathes of western Sydney that were previously bushland and
soil – which absorb water before flooding – had been paved over
and roads and hard surfaces built to support new suburbs in recent
years, there is increased runoff and flood risk to communities lower
down. Residents in western Sydney complained of this issue as their
homes, which had seen out previous floods, succumbed to the recent
deluge…..
The
NSW planning minister, Rob Stokes, referred the Guardian’s
inquiries to environment minister Matt Kean’s office, which
referred it to Infrastructure NSW.
An
Infrastructure NSW spokeswoman said the government had considered
buybacks to mitigate flood risk, including in its Hawkesbury-Nepean
flood strategy released in 2018.
“However,
in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley, large-scale compulsory acquisition
across entire suburbs would be necessary for this to be effective and
would have very significant social and economic costs,” she said. [my yellow highlighting]
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Aerial shot of the Hawkesbury River in flood
IMAGE: ABC News, 21 March 2021
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