25 March 2021 - Ordinary

Good evening, everybody. I'd like to start by acknowledging the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury, and pay respect to all Elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of the country. I hand over to the Acting General Manager.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Members attending the meeting are advised that in the event of an emergency, you'll be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden. I would also like to advise that in accordance with Clause 5.18 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting of Council meetings. The revision of any information that is recorded is voluntary. If any person does not wish to be recorded, they should not address or request to address the meeting.

The recordings may be made available to other persons where such access is in accordance with the relevant regulations. The recordings are stored in Council's records management system. For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the Council tonight, it is expected that you'll refrain from making any insult, allegation or personal reflection against any person present or not at this meeting. This request relates to both your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from councillors. Finally, it is also requested that if any person participating in the meeting has a mobile phone, they either turn it off or turn it to silent. Thank you.

Thank you. I've received an apology from Councillor Reynolds. Are there any further apologies?

Yes, Councillor Garrow as well. She's still working on her cleaner.

Councillor Garrow, Councillor Reynolds.

Okay. Who else is? So, Councillor Tree is not present. Is she? No. Councillor Rasmussen is not present, but I think might be late.

He's trying to get a link.

Yeah, we did get him the link, I believe. And then Councillor Ross is not present. Happy to accept all of those as apologies.

Moved. Councillor Kotlash, seconded Councillor Calvert. All those in favour? All right. Carried. Any declarations of interest?

No. So we'll move ahead to the Mayoral Minute. There was a supplementary business paper, and I do apologise, first of all, for how late that came out. We were working this afternoon with limited information on the situation. We've put together a plan, but I do apologise it did come together quite late. We are going to have a briefing, a bit of an update on the situation and Council's response to the emergency. We might have that prior to—we do have one speaker on this item—but we might have that prior to, we might have this briefing prior to that speaker, if that's okay with everybody. I'd just like to also, just at the outset, let people know that our thoughts are with those people that have been affected by the emergency.

We have lots of people that have lost their homes, that are unable to return home still now, and then lots of people isolated where they are. Our thoughts are with you all, and we know how challenging it is. I also wanted to take the opportunity to just publicly thank, and I'm sure there'll be more about this later, but publicly thank the SES and other emergency responders, everyone else in the community who's volunteering. As I've been moving around and talking to people, I've been incredibly proud at how the community has pulled together already, and I know that that will continue as we move forward and look at the recovery phase. So I'll hand over to Director of Infrastructure Services to give us an update on the situation.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm just going to give a very brief outline of planning the incident and where we're currently sitting at the moment, future actions that we'll be implementing. Look, it's not intended to be or able to fully detail what's transpired over the last week in a few minutes here. To give some perspective on the scale of this emergency, we've had over four and a half thousand properties out of our total number of about 27,000 properties which have been affected by inundation to one degree or another. Many of those properties are still isolated, and were certainly isolated during the peak of those floods. Flooding reached on gauge heights at around 13 metres at both Windsor and Richmond, and at around 15 metres at Colo.

Those are levels that, whilst not without precedent, have certainly not been experienced in the last 30 years. I suppose the good news, and got to temper these things, is that those levels are slowly dropping. Colo River is now down to around six metres from that 15 metre peak, and Richmond is now down at 10, and Windsor at 11. And just to give some perspective of that, the flooding at Macquarie Street has now allowed the road to be reopened. It's dropped to that level.

This flood, however, was also complicated by a couple of really significant issues, particularly the closure of Bells Line of Road due to initially a number of rock falls and then some structural issues associated with the road. That road remains closed, and when coupled with the very high levels at the Colo River and the bridge closure there, we had around half of our population on the west side of the river. That's around 30,000 people who were basically isolated, not accessible other than by boat or, when weather lifted, by helicopter. The Putty Road has reopened now to traffic. Initially was limited to 15 tonne limit, but that's now been lifted totally. That's had a significant impact on the supplies and logistics as we're all aware to the western side of the river.

And this, yeah, the major grocery chains, supermarkets are now supplying via the Putty Road to that part of our city.

As I said, we did commence significant planning last Friday in anticipation of flooding, and that was even prior to the knowledge that potentially it would get to predicted heights on Sunday of 15 and 15.6 before they were revised down. So we actually had council equipment, as is our normal plan, split between both sides of the river. We activated our Wilberforce depot to enable other staff to access there, particularly our customer service staff. We prepared our sewer treatment plants. We arranged for sullage tankers to be on the other side of the river from their normal domicile and organised for council's domestic waste trucks to be placed on both sides of the river.

Council has assisted with emergency food and transport delivery arrangements with SES prior to, as I said, the Putty Road reopening, and that was initially restricted, but that's now ceased, that transport across the river by boat. Council delivered groceries and so on both to, for an initial emergency and then to the supermarkets. Our sewer network was certainly affected to some degree and remains so. So again, I caution anybody who's to take care in floodwaters, not just because of sewer, but it's a hazardous arrangement and contaminated waters and so on need to be borne in mind. As everybody would be aware, our road network has been heavily impacted, both by the heavy rainfall as well as the flooding that's occurring and continuing to occur.

We have undertaken a range of interim repairs, and whilst they may not be to everybody's satisfaction, it is difficult with both supply of the cold mix materials to carry out those effective repairs. We have engaged traffic construction companies to commence those permanent repairs as the waters recede. We were assisted by Blacktown Council, who provided us with a patching crew the other day, and that was most welcome. As I said, we've got contractors out there now, and they've been engaged to carry out those permanent repairs. As I said, the floodwaters are still up, but as the floodwaters recede, we're getting indications of fairly extensive failures along some of our, I'll call them our riverine roads, such as St Albans Road, Greens Road, where we know of significant embankment failures through there, so they will be requiring extensive repairs.

There's certainly a number of images around of Freeman's Reach Road, and I think today we've also been advised of possibly the loss of our low-level bridge at Upper Colo. So a lot of these things still need to be confirmed on the ground when we get access to those areas. Council is geared up to now start clearing our roads as the waters recede, so that's going to be one of the key things in being able to assist in the clean-up effort by property owners and removal of debris and waste. So it's a vitally important action. The Hawkesbury, along with many other local government areas, has been declared a natural disaster area. So there's been a declaration there which gives us access to funding, particularly for roads, to undertake the repairs on those.

We're currently assessing the damages to make those claims. In addition to that, we certainly have other insurance claims that we will be looking at, and other opportunities we're trying to assess how we get other areas repaired that may not either be subject to natural disaster funding or insurance. Particularly our parks and some of our reserves. So they will also be looked at as to how we can get those back in operation. As I said, they certainly couldn't do justice to all the physical impacts. Certainly there's people out there, our crews are still out there doing works and undertaking those. I guess in addition to those physical impacts though, there are the human and social impacts. And I'd probably throw over to our Community Services Manager at this stage to basically give a little bit of an update on how we've been managing that from that side of the fence.

Is the Manager Community Services online? Great, thanks.

Thank you. Similarly to what... The Director Infrastructure Services said, I guess the only picture that I can provide is quite small. There's an enormous amount of efforts and energies underway that have been led by community leaders, residents wanting to help, and other key community organisations that won't necessarily be captured here. There's a lot of activity on social media with regards to that, though, and it's really positive to see, and it's recovery in action because it really is ultimately the place we want to get to, where the community is supporting itself to recover. Before North Richmond was actually cut off, staff were working with SES and the Emergency Operations Centre to encourage early evacuation of some quite vulnerable residents.

This happened on Saturday, and we were quite fortunate to be able to get them to appropriate long-term accommodation with family out of area. Since the disaster was declared, we've had staff working intermittently at the evacuation centres, being Richmond, North Richmond, and also at Castle Hill in recognition of the Hawkesbury residents were evacuated to that space. Our teams worked to provide administrative space to Strong Nation, who operates the church that was actually flooded on Macquarie Street in Windsor, who had lost that space, and are a provider of emergency relief services. So they'll be operational from a small site in Peppercorn Place as of Monday, and it will enable the community to go in and access immediate financial assistance on an ongoing basis.

We've been communicating through the Emergency Operations Centre with Health and the Department of Communities and Justice, who are facilitating the evacuation centres, just to assist with some high-level coordination of social services in response to the needs that evacuees have identified that they require. It's predominantly around housing, transport in the first instance, and we've been able to work really closely with The typical community transport, who has deployed buses in every part of the LGA and has continued to provide essential transport services on a priority basis, with a particular focus on moving evacuees from centres to a point in which they can access temporary accommodation.

We're working really closely with the corporate communications team, sourcing information with regards to assistance that's available to residents. That's only just, I guess, only new information is coming out at the moment, but they've been working really closely with us to ensure that that information is distributed really quickly to communities and also multiple methods in recognition that we do have a lot of community members whose internet connectivity has been interrupted through this disaster. In addition, our community recovery officer, our Bushfire Recovery Officer, has maintained regular and ongoing contact with people who are in outlying communities who we've already had quite established relationships with and, I guess, now have also been fire impacted.

So we're expecting to work with those communities and establish recovery hubs in a range of locations under the guidance of Resilience New South Wales in the coming weeks.

Thank you. I’ll just hand over to the Acting General Manager for a further update.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Just in addition to what the Director of Infrastructure Services and the Manager of Community Services has gone through, I’ve just outlined the different facilities that Council has and where we’re at with opening those facilities. So we’ve had a number of staff here at the Council that have been affected personally by the floods, but also a number of them live on the west side of the river, which means they don’t have access back into Windsor and Richmond. So therefore then, there’s been a number of issues about opening Council’s facilities because of those staffing issues, but also too because of power outages, as well as access to a number of the buildings. So over the last couple of days, we have opened up a number of the facilities, and as of tomorrow, the admin building here at Windsor will be open, as will the Central Library at Windsor, the Regional Gallery, the Regional Museum, the Companion Animal Shelter, and also the Oasis Aquatic and Leisure Centre will open up again tomorrow.

A number of other facilities are still closed, and we’ll assess those in the next 24 hours whether we can open them up, dependent on access and also depending on being able to have staff come into those facilities to staff them. So that includes the Richmond Library, the Visitor Information Centre, the Waste Management Facility, Richmond Pool, and the nursery as well. So we’re endeavouring to try and get the facilities back online as quickly as we possibly can, but at the moment we have a number of them already open and a couple more opening up again tomorrow. We’ve also, during the whole week, we’ve had a temporary customer service facility set up at the depot, which has been taking a number of calls as well, which has been good as well.

So that’s the latest with the opening of our facilities. Thank you.

So we’ll go now to our first speaker, which is Mr Jim Sweeney-Nap.

Yeah, hi. My name is Jim. I'm a resident of Morelia, one of six houses on my street that have been quite affected by the floods. I just, first off, I apologise. I've never done something like this before, so I just wasn't really prepared. But I just wanted to speak to you in regards to the kind of things that would be of great assistance to myself and my neighbours in being able to return to our homes.

So they're small acreage homes, so they may be different things to what more suburban places need. So these things would be: we're on tank water, which is most likely contaminated now, so if there was any assistance with emptying and refilling water tanks to supply water to our homes, that would be good There's a lot of trees in our vicinity that may be damaged by debris that's floated past, so clearing of damaged trees would be good. We have septic tanks because we're not connected to town sewer. Those are all going to be flooded and full, so we wouldn't be able to use our facilities at home.

We've had a large amount of debris washed into our houses from other places. Some of these are quite bulky items, like construction materials and things, that will be difficult for people to remove by themselves. And also there's concerns with power boxes that may have been underwater, so... If there's any assistance with an electrician to come out and check that kind of thing for safety, that would be of great assistance.

Thank you. Sorry, sorry . Were you finished ? Sorry.

Yeah, yeah, that was it. That's the list of things that I had. Yeah

Good. Can I say thank you for coming and talking, or being available to talk to us tonight. I can't imagine what you've been through over the last couple of days, and I know you're doing a really good thing for your community by coming, but making the effort in the situation that you're in to still come and talk to us and tell us what you need. So certainly, you know, I've certainly made notes of all those things and, yeah, we'll look at what we can action. Happy to take questions from other councillors. Yeah no problem. Okay, Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor, and thanks, Jim. I want to echo the Mayor's comments. It's really useful for you to come and talk to us. We've got a couple of councillors who are severely impacted, and they're not here tonight. So it's really helpful for us to speak to people who are actually dealing with the direct impacts of flooding. Can I just ask you a couple of questions, and I don't in any way want to pry or be overly personal. I know that it's been an issue. It's been an issue that we've known about on the Floodplain Committee for some time, and it's been an issue that's come up in the media. Are you eligible for insurance? I'm not asking whether you are insured personally. I'm just trying to get an idea of what our likelihood of uninsured residents is.

So I'm eligible, but it's kind of financially.. . I'm kind of unavailable and speaking to my neighbours, they're in the same position. I've only recently purchased my house and I was absolutely shocked by the insurance quote I got, which was in excess of $20,000 a year for flood insurance. So I was not in a position to be able to take that up. So I'm not insured and speaking to all of my neighbours that I've spoken to over the last few days, it's been a common theme that everyone's in the same boat. Between $20,000 and $30,000 a year is not something that we could afford to pay.

Yeah, and I think that's really common across a number of areas, and it's a fear that we've had and not been able to get a resolution on from the Insurance Council or any further help. So I think that's useful to know, I think, because it's looking like we're going to have to have a really massive community effort to get everyone back on their feet because we can't rely on insurance payouts to do that. So it's useful for us to know, I think, that Morelia is impacted in a similar way to parts of Windsor because of those costs. Can I also ask you, you mentioned that your septic tank's flooded and full, and also that your water tanks are contaminated. Can I ask what you're doing currently for effluent disposal and for water?

Well, I'm staying with my brother in Wollongong, so it's a bit of a trip each day to come back to try and clear up at home, which is why I'm doing it from the car I was on the way back to Wollongong at the moment. So, yeah, we just aren't using the facilities at home because...

We

Don't know. Like, I'm not sure how contaminated my water is. My tank was a little bit higher than some of my neighbours' tanks, which would have been completely covered , and my septic system was completely covered. So we are, you know, we're going to places like McDonald's and using facilities there instead. Okay.

Thank you. That's really helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Jim, and thank you for raising those very practical ideas of how we might be able to help. Just similar to Councillor Wheeler, and sorry about the insurance situation. We've been looking into that for many years and it's no clearer. But just around the septic tank, can you just—are you talking about like traditional septic tank? Are these the ones in the ground, or is it biocycle, or is it pump out?

It's a traditional septic

Tank.

It's like a concrete tank and it's got the

Absorption trench. Yeah, a traditional septic tank. So it's full, and is it overflowing currently, or is it—

Well, it was underwater when I was there last time, so I wouldn't be able to tell you, sorry.

Okay, thanks. Just so we know what sort of things are out there and about. But thank you. Thank you for clarifying that, and good luck. Best of luck with your cleaning up. Thank you. Thanks.

Councillor Ross.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Good evening, sir. Just on the point of electrical safety, could I suggest that in view of the fact that you are actually having to commute— Quite some distance. It might be as well on your fuse box to put up a sign with your mobile phone number or a contact number in case the electrical Endeavour Energy, or whoever it is, would be in contact. Now, as I understand it, you should not touch the electrical system or turn on the power until Endeavour Energy or the appropriate authority have come in, and they will, as I understand it further, insist that once they have cleared safety from their perspective, they will require of you to engage a suitably qualified electrical contractor to ensure that the safety within the premises is at an appropriate level and not going to cause a conflagration or , of course, a nasty shock, which is of some risk in that situation.

I hope that might be of help, sir, and all the best for your recovery. Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Councillor. Thanks. Thanks, Jim.

Okay, so we'll move on to the mayoral minute. So the plan we've come up with today, I've been speaking to people over the last couple of days, and despite the fact that the water is still receding and still quite high in most places, the thing that seems to be front of mind for most affected residents is the fact that they want to be able to clean up. They want to know what the plan is to clean up so they can get their life, in a small way, back to normal. And that's the reason we've called the extraordinary meeting tonight, is because I think we need to make a decision about the cleanup in the short term and what that looks like for our residents. As you'll see in the supplementary business paper, the state government has announced flood assistance.

They've put out some communication that indicates that they are intending To have pickup points, skip bins and other things in close to the locations that have been affected, in those suburbs, in those streets, where they're going to be needed. That will allow the most efficient cleanup because residents will be able to just simply—not simply, but residents will be able to move the debris into skip bins that are close to their home without the need for other transport. That's going to be the most efficient and practical from council's point of view as well, because it doesn't have to end up in our landfill, and it can be handled by the state government under the disaster funding. So that is, I think, the best option for going to be the best option for most people.

I've been talking to—I spoke to the Emergency Services Minister. I've spoken to the member for Hawkesbury multiple times to try and get some clarity around when this is going to start, when they intend to have these bins physically on streets. I've not been able to get an answer at this point. I think the government's grappling with the size of the task they've got, given the flooding in multiple locations down the coast. So they've not been able to give me a day or a time when this is going to actually happen. But we do know they are rolling it out from speaking with some other people in the industry, so we're aware that it is coming. So what I'm suggesting is a plan in the interim, rather than just telling people to wait for that, because people do want to get going, is that when we're able to open our tip, our waste facility, which we expect to be on Monday.

On that point too, we've had some conversations and spent a lot of time working out whether we can get it open sooner, but for safety reasons, and it just doesn't seem possible to get it open before Monday. The plan I've got here is that from Monday, anybody from a flood-affected property would be able to go to the tip and dispose of their rubbish with no cost to them. That in the next day or so, staff work on developing an appropriate plan so that we can get the logistics around that working. So there's a lot of things to consider. We don't want a big rush. We need to have a system of how we know which people are flood affected. So there's a lot to work out. I'm also suggesting that this is only an interim policy.

This is going to be incredibly expensive, even in the short term for Council. It's not sustainable that this community should have to cop the full burden ourselves. It's a natural disaster. It's not something that our residents should have to pay for through their rates. So this is an interim policy. I hope that, you know, in the next day or two that I get a good call from the State Government saying, you know, this is starting early next week. That would be ideal. But until we know when the State Government intends to roll out this program, I think we need to offer this to residents so they have some way of cleaning up without a large cost that they have to bear themselves. So that's the reason for the meeting tonight, and that's the reason for the Mayoral Minute.

So I'll put it to Council and hope you'll endorse the plan. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor, and thank you for gathering up that information after our previous discussions at the briefing on Tuesday night. I think that having an interim policy until we get some clarity is essential. Just within what you've just said, I didn't hear anything. I did see, I think, in—I had a brief scan through the material that came for the Mayoral Minute—was there to be some localised large containers? I know it said one west of the river. Will there be any east of the river as well? Because a problem that has come to light is that not everyone has the capacity to get their material to the waste management facility. They may not have a ute or a trailer. They may not be able to get it there.

So if they don't have anything, I suppose they can't get it very far. But will there be another form of collection, particularly from the urban areas, that we are organising in the short term to address people who don't have their own transport to the facility?

Yeah, look, given the time constraints, I haven't included that as a resolution of Council, and that's due to the fact that there's logistical challenges around that. There's also potentially, we've had indication that we might not have the availability of those bins, that we can actually get them. But yes, it's an action that we will be taking over the next days to try and organise that. It's not something we're ready to say, yes, it's definitely going to happen in this place, but it's certainly the intention that we will organise that as soon as we can, assuming we're not doubling up on what the state government's doing. Okay,

Thank you. A further question. Some people have proceeded in a couple of localities to get large skip bins that they've put on site, that they've either paid for or that have been donated. So for those people, will they also be eligible for the disposal of what is within those vessels at our waste management facility? This is a question I've been asked by some residents who've pooled together to get a large container to put their refuse in.

Yeah, I can't see why they wouldn't be eligible. You know, if they're flood affected and they shouldn't have to pay just because they got in early. So I'll just clarify that that'd be my intention. Director of Infrastructure Services want to comment on the logistics of that

I'm just thinking that one through. One of the issues that we have at the landfill is the ability to accept skips and have them tipped there, so we'd need to work through that issue. I don't see an issue with the cost. It's actually more the logistics of actually tipping on our site. Generally don't permit skips to be tipped there, but we can certainly have a look and see whether that's possible.

Is it these are the ones of the larger variety, almost like a, you know, not the ones you see on a building site. They're the big ones.

Yeah, it's actually a matter of whether we can actually clear those out. I'd need to take that one on notice and talk with our operational staff as whether that's something that we could actually arrange as well to have those taken there.

Thank you for that. I think that's all the questions I've got at the moment, but thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Cutlash.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Have we got any intel on whether this is the end of this flood? Because it seems that, you know, is the long-term forecast got anything else in store for us? Because I'd hate to sort of have a lot of big skips throughout the city, you know, if we're going to have another, if there's any risk of another peak to this flood. I just wondered whether we've had any knowledge .

I don't know that. I mean, I think we probably all might have an opinion on things, but we probably, the responsible thing is to rely on the Bureau of Meteorology advice, which is that the river has peaked and is falling. I wouldn't give you a guarantee. I don't think anyone here wants to give a guarantee there's no more flooding.

Yeah, no, I just wondered. Certainly, the

Official advice is suggesting that the river has peaked and is now falling, or is steady and falling in all places, and falling in most places and steady in one or two. Yeah.

Okay. My second question is about the dividing up of rubbish and sorting of rubbish. So would residents be getting a kind of series of skip bins to put various sorts of rubbish in? I think if I remember, and I like the Deputy Mayor's sort of... Can the information that was sent out, are we going to have a, you know, local sort of bin for metal, one for furnishings or et cetera? Is that how it's going to work?

It does. That's certainly how the information from the state government reads. It says that it gives advice to separate waste into food waste, hard bulk waste, green waste, scrap metal and hazardous materials. It's asked people to separate them into those categories, so I would assume that's because they'll be disposed of separately.

So if in the interim, when we do our own, when we get people to do their own clearing, if they're keen to do so, are we going to insist that they separate their waste? Well

I think they do separate their waste at the tip currently, so you have to drive around to each category. So that's what we're suggesting here. It is a logistical challenge, I guess, if we do end up with skip bins in places, how we'll manage that.

Yeah. Anyway, I suppose we just have to wear that. But yeah, okay. Okay, it sounds like a good plan. Thank you.

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks. I've got a number of questions. Mr Organ raised in the briefing on Tuesday night that our landfill would struggle to contain the amount of stuff coming our way. Have we had any further negotiations with other sites to send it to?

Well, if the state government waste would not be coming to our landfill, that's certainly the case, that we wouldn't be accepting that waste. But in the interim, we are suggesting that people bring it to our landfill. Yeah. Okay.

So hopefully we'll get something back from the state fairly quickly that will take some of that pressure away from our landfill. Mr Sweeney raised the problem of sewage, and this is something that I'd already listed as an issue. Where are we up to with the sullage pump-outs, and what provision can we make? So we've got a number of properties that are eligible for a regular pump-out, and I understand that we're just doing half loads at the moment so that we can keep a servicing, some sort of level of servicing over what we've got. How can we and how would residents go about organising a one-off pump-out for properties where they've been flooded?

I'll refer that to Mr. Organ.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think we've probably got to turn our mind to that. That's something that I hadn't contemplated at the moment, and the issue that Mr. Sweeney has raised is something we will need to have a think about, about how that might actually be done and how it might be claimed. We would have our sullage tankers would not normally pump out septic tanks, so we may need to look at other contractors who could do that and how that might be paid for or what the cost is. I'm not sure at this stage what the scope and the number of properties that are in that category are at the moment. That's something obviously, it's just another element of the clean-up that we will need to address.

So we must have a list of those properties because they would be the properties that would be on our inspection schedule at some point. So we should know who they are. Could we perhaps get in contact with those properties and get an idea and perhaps add that to the Meral Minute that we organise some sullage servicing? Because this is a public health problem, and we really need to get on this quickly as people move back to their properties. People are very keen to get back into their houses. If they can't flush the toilet, then we've got real problems with them being on site. So could that be added as a 0.5 to the Meral Minute that we investigate and enact the need for one-off sullage pump-outs?

Are you happy with developer plan to provide one-off sullage services to flood-affected properties?

Yeah, as long as that's done really quickly, because otherwise we're going to have—I mean, unless people are aware that this is a real issue and are happy to use some alternative composting toilet or something in the interim, and they're knowledgeable enough to do that safely, we're looking at something really problematic. We've already got high levels of contamination, which brings me to the next question, which is around water servicing. So, sorry, sorry. So I've got two questions regarding Sydney Water. One is, I know we've got some properties that have—and I know this isn't our problem, but it does fall into our basket of advocacy—we've got properties on this side of the river where their sewage tanks under the three-town sewage system have failed.

We know that this is an ongoing issue. It happened last year. It's happened again, although it appears the problem is largely with Glossodia this time, I think because all of the rural force tanks had their pumps replaced last time. So can we get a statement out of Sydney Water as to when they're able to come and service those tanks? Because we've got people who've had alarms going off since Friday, and some of those tanks no longer working and no longer clearing the effluent going into them. So we need to get onto Sydney Water about that. And then the other question was Mr. Sweeney's question about contaminated water tanks and water supply for them. Could we add that as another matter to look at, please?

And then that brings me to the overarching issue, which is a public health warning. We've got—so the bottom of my street has been flooded. The water receded this morning, and it's provided great entertainment for the locals who have been water skiing. Canoeing and swimming and bringing their kids with towels to swim in the floodwater, which I'm sure is jolly good fun, but we're now getting reports from other people who've been involved in cleanup activities that they're getting quite sick. So we know that floodwater is usually full of effluent, and that's now starting to strike as gastric. So given that the medical services on this side are really thin, can we get a public health warning on a web tile on the council page, please, warning people that not being in floodwater isn't just dangerous; it's a real health problem, and people need to be much more careful about what they're drinking, what they're playing in, and that perhaps this isn't the best time for a swim.

Yeah, certainly I've included that in all my communication, I think councillors as well, but is it possible to put that on the website as a—?

Yes,

The answer was yes. Yes, we can have that on the website, so we'll action that.

Thank you. Yes, yes, with an echo. Is it also possible, Mr Mayor, for us to tee up a meeting with the federal and state members so that we can talk about what services the federal and state governments are providing for us?

You mean for the whole council, yeah?

Yes, please. Yeah. Okay And that's probably easier done just as an informal discussion, perhaps. And I've got loads more, but I'll stop and let someone else have a go and come back. I've had a question from the Piney Village people, so at Wilberforce, which was inundated through several of the buildings, and they seem to have survived very well. They've been there cleaning them out today. They've cleaned five buildings already. They do need to be inspected, particularly around electrical work and things, and they're wondering when council will be able to send staff in to do that so that they can start using some of the things, but also so that they can access some more of the site as well. Okay.

Thank you. So just to clarify for councillors, we've added a point five, which is a developed plan to provide one-off salary services to flood-affected properties. Also taken away some actions. I'm going to be contacting Sydney Water to get some clarity around the sewerage issue there. We're going to get a public health notice, or something similar, on our website around the danger of floodwater. I'm going to organise a meeting with federal and state members, and then we'll take the action away for someone to get in touch with the Pioneer Village.

We've got a couple of questions from Councillor Rasmusson that have come through in writing, so I'm going to ask the Acting General Manager to read those on the record.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Yes, the first question from Councillor Rasmusson is: what medical, paramedical facilities, e.g. ambulances, were placed on the west side of the river before the bridge closes?

Do we have that information?

Mr Organ, maybe.

It's my understanding that ambulance service actually provided ambulances at St John of God Hospital, based over there at North Richmond, prior to the flood situation getting to a point where they were closed off.

Thank you.

Is

There another question?

There is one more question from Councillor Rasmusson. What is being done to avert the public health issue with spilling and malfunctioning septic tanks and other sewerage systems?

I think we've had that answered already now. It's probably asked before that previous question, so we've dealt with that one. Councillor Ross.

Thank you, Mr Mayor.

In reference to the points made by Councillor Wheeler, I concur with her points, and the document draft which appears on screen at the moment is missing. Reference to the potable water situation, as is or was indicated by our community member tonight, is at least dubious and, frankly, potentially also a health risk. I feel that something should be done in regard to the potable water situation for those folk on

Rainwater services and who have suffered inundation. And the other point, I refer you to the commencement at point one.

I'm rather concerned by the use of the term flood assistance. I think there needs to be some change to possibly flood assistance and natural disaster or something of that ilk because , as I understand it, not only were properties affected by inundation, but there were also landslips and no doubt some great losses of vegetation. And I'm sure that this council is going to be of a mind that that type of incident and loss would be part and parcel of this overall interim policy. So, thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I know that council resources at this point in time and over the coming weeks will be ultimately very stretched. But just in regards to point one of your motion, I was wondering if we could have some comment from staff regarding those residents who have been affected by floodwater who don't have a vehicle to be able to take debris or waste products to the tip. Will council have the possibility to provide at least one curbside pick-up to these affected residents?

Refer that to Director of City Planning.

Thank you, Lord Mayor. So at the moment, we have been in contact with Cleanaway regarding the pickup service, additional pickup service. As you know, all households have one pickup that they're allowed to have. So obviously, if they haven't used that, then please we'll be encouraging them to take advantage of it now. And for those that have had their one household pickup service already, we're engaging with Cleanaway to see if we can, what the cost would be to provide an extra service.

Mr Mayor, I was wondering if that should be part of the motion at some point then, if those residents already have had one curbside, but they obviously have flood damage that they just can't take to the tip because they've got a smaller vehicle or something like that , can we give them some sort of authority or confirmation or assurance now that they will be able to have that one extra pick-up to do with the flood debris rather than ringing Council and getting the ring around

Yeah, I hadn't really turned my mind to that question. I guess the other thing with that is generally when you book one of those, there is a two or three week delay . And you

Don't want that stuff sitting

Around. I would kind of be hoping that the state government flood assistance would be in place by then. But yeah, I think we can include that in our communications going forward. I think that's a valid point.

I think we need to because people with smaller vehicles will undoubtedly have no other choice but to leave it at the front of their property. So as a health issue for their neighbours and things like that, with no fault of their own, we need to be aware that that will need to be picked up regardless of whether they had one curbside or not this year Thanks.

Councillors in program? Yes, Mr Mayor. Look, I was content to leave this as just an operational question for staff, but since Councillor Richards has raised it, I mean, it says that we will accept waste from flood-affected properties. But how we establish the bona fides of people bringing waste to the facility, I think will be an issue. And it may be that they're being brought by people who are not the property owners, but are doing it on behalf of property owners. I'm not suggesting that we should be prescriptive in this motion, but simply to flag that it will be an operational question for staff.

Yeah, thank you. I think that's sort of what I meant by the point too there, just to acknowledge that there's a lot of little things like that we need to work out and that we want to give a broad direction here and then give some authority for those logistics to be worked out over the next day or two. Can those who have already spoken, I wish to speak again, just lower your hand, please, because there's a few with hands up. Deputy Mayor, were you looking to speak again? Yes,

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just asked some questions before, and I have a couple more, if that's okay. Of course . Thank you. I'm just wondering, I know we can't give a definite time frame, but I'm just wondering, what would be the time frame for, like, how long are we going to wait for the state government before we just simply go ahead and continue to implement something? We're just doing this on an interim basis. I'm just clarifying that. So, in other words, by tomorrow, something's going to be in place if we resolve to do it. Is that correct?

Yeah, the idea here is that we're resolving right now that we're going to allow this when the tip opens on Monday. And I would, you know, I'd be hoping that by the time we have a meeting on Tuesday, we might have some better news and we could change the plan again. But obviously, if we want to have it at no cost, we have to resolve that.

Okay. And will we seek retrospective funding from the state government for this if we have to proceed ourselves on that basis?

Yes. Yeah

Okay. Another question. Will we, are we going to translate what we're doing now into some sort of solid system and plan for next time so that we have these skip bins or things like this ready? I know we've had additional issues this time, such as the landslide up at Mount Tamar and so on, which has, you know, impeded upon access and so on. But I think it would be really good. We were in the midst of doing an emergency management review, which came to a standstill, and I think we really need to finish that because carrying on from Councillor Cotlash's question about the long-term forecast, we do actually have a long-term forecast for a lot more rain in the coming months. And so with levels of saturation like they are, it would not be unheard of to have a repeat event further down the track.

Not that people want to hear that, but the whole point is preparedness and resilience to deal with that if that's to occur. So I just hope that we have this all translated into a specific protocol for following . The next question is around the McDonald Valley, and has anyone been out there to see them, and have we specifically found out what exactly they need? Because they have, I think, felt a little left out because they weren't in the official bulletins, I think, coming out from somewhere, or they weren't included on the dashboard. And I'm just wondering if someone has made contact with them specifically to see what exactly their needs are around cleanup and what's coming up.

Yeah, so I've had some conversations with them because, yeah, I think it's important that they don't feel forgotten in the Forgotten Valley. They don't need to feel like they're part of it and we're there for them. I also have concerns about the Bureau of Meteorology, I believe, not being funded to report on the McDonald Valley, and that leaves them completely in the dark. So I've got a mayoral minute being prepared at the moment so that we can have that on Tuesday, because I think that's an urgent issue that's come out of this. We need to lobby to have that reporting for them. But yes, now I've been in contact and made sure that they know who to reach out to if they need anything from council. And, yeah, at the moment they're very isolated still, so I don't think anyone can get there as such, but you've just got to keep talking

Which leads me to Colo, specifically to the upper Colo region. I know they had a shortage of fuel. I'm not sure if that's been rectified since the Putty Road was opened. Perhaps it has, I'm not sure. But they would really like someone to go out there to actually look , you know, on the ground. And I'm sure somebody is intending to, but I think because this is the community that suffered from flooding last year, many of them still hadn't fully recovered from that, and some who had experienced issues around the fires as well. It would be really good if somebody could go out and just actually, I assume someone's going to be going out to check on that bridge, which appears to have failed, that's out there.

So if somebody could... Go out and, you know, face-to-face speak with some of the community out there. It would be really good. I mean, I mean from, on a staff perspective, to look at the damage. Yeah.

So, yeah, I was speaking to people from the valley about the fuel, and we did manage to, through Robin Preston, get some fuel dropped out. But I understand in the meantime they've gotten some road access, if not slightly informal road access, organised themselves, and so they are not as isolated as they were.

That's wonderful, and that leads me to the next question, which I also asked at the briefing the other night, which was about the possibility in terms of expediency of repairing some of these damaged roads. Once they're assessed and the extent of damage is ascertained, the possibility of having some local road crews. I know that out there and in some of our other more isolated areas, there are people with the capacity to do this work, and I'm just hoping that can be investigated because otherwise, it's—we're going to obviously, looking at Freeman's Reach Road today and other roads, we're obviously going to have a lot of roads that are really severely damaged that need to be worked on and so on.

And so I know there's probably issues around utilising local crews, but if people have the appropriate equipment and skills and anything else that's required, it would be really advantageous to their community if they could have that roadwork done to allow them to have the access to get back to their employment and so on. So can that be considered as a possibility, please?

Acting General Manager, to make a note of that. Yep.

Thank you. Still going. Sorry, the last point is around the extent of what the cleanup will involve, and we know it will be huge because of the extent of what's happened. And a number of people have approached me about volunteer labour, coordinated volunteer labour. Could we have an update of what the proposal might be from the Council for the public of any involvement we may have, or any organisations that are perhaps already planning on doing something like this? And by that I mean where people identify that they need help and where other people in the community have the skills and may wish to help, and the coordination of that. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Yep. So I think to answer that first is not a very good answer, but that's been happening very informally at this stage. That's what I've been spending my time doing over the last two days, is just hooking people up. But yeah, I think that's a very valid point that we need to systemise that so we're not missing opportunities, and we also have it in a more practical way going forward now we're lessening the emergency and more in the recovery

I think too there are issues of, as Councillor Wheeler identified, there's contaminated water, there's sewage overflow, there's also the issues of people needing protective equipment if they're working in some regard, and there's also the elements of liability associated with that. So that would be wonderful to have an update on any system around coordinating that going forward. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Okay. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks. That's taking care of one of my points. We've got a very practical and a highly skilled and a very generous community, and they're champing at the bit. Apparently someone's come out and fixed Packer Road off their own bat today, so people can get up and down it more easily because they've been struggling to get out to Lower Portland around the other way because it's a bit wet. So we're already seeing that sort of thing happening . I've got another set of questions. Where are we up to with rubbish collection throughout the LGA, but particularly west of the river

So I might refer that to Director of City Planning.

Sorry, can I just ask that we just go back to the gallery view rather than just the Meryl Minute. I think we've all had time to read it. It's just a bit difficult to talk at the Meryl Minute and not see everybody. Thanks

Thank you. So as of today, we've been able to empty the three trucks that were full of rubbish in a temporary site , and the waste collection will resume tomorrow morning in the areas that were missed earlier in the week, and so the west of the river over the next few days. So the staff will work over the weekend in order to catch up on the areas that have been missed west of the river. So

Those of us who didn't put out our bins because they thought they might be in the road or wander off should put them out.

Yes. So we're working with the comms team. The comms will go out, or might have already gone out. It's already gone out. So yes, so word of mouth might also help. Great,

Thank you. Debris. We heard from Mr Sweeney about the amount of debris that we've got on property. So we're going to have a lot of debris on private property, but also on public property. Are we beginning to make arrangements for clearance of that?

Mr Robin

Indicated earlier that it's one of our priorities is to get our roads opened as the waters recede. The secondary part of that will be obviously public land such as parks and so on, depending on what material is on those, whether it's sediment, we'll deal with those on a case-by-case basis. But our priority at the moment will be to get roads open so that either the state through its resources or whatever council decides to do , that we can actually get to these properties and start to assess the damages and get on then potentially to private lands. Thank you.

Thanks. Do we have an idea of how many people we've got in temporary accommodation at the moment? I

Don't know that we have that number . Refer that to the Manager of Community Services, maybe if she's there

And you're still on the line?

There she comes

So, did you hear that question?

Oh, apologies.

Can that question

Be repeated?

Yeah, the question was, do we know how many residents we have in temporary accommodation at the moment?

That have been moved from evacuation centres? I

Think that's the intent of the question, yeah. Yeah

Look, not firm figures, no. We have requested that information from the Department of Communities and Justice, who are managing those sites , who are going to provide us with the number of people who actually registered at evacuation centres, the number of people who left and sourced their own accommodation, and then the ones who were actually taken from evacuation centres directly to temporary accommodation. Ordinarily, that information is handed over from coordinators of those sites to Resilience New South Wales once the evacuation centres are closed , at which point in time, Resilience, I guess, engages housing for more long-term options. Our team, and part of the rationale of basing the team at various sites, is really to work with the coordinators at that point in time to try and secure a more long-term option where it's preferable.

So we're hoping to have that information by Monday at the latest. And provide firm numbers once we receive it.

Thanks. I'm particularly concerned about marginal communities like the permanent residents of Caravan Parks, so Wilberforce Caravan Park, for example. We've got a guy who's sleeping in a car down at Wilberforce Shopping Centre, and the community is looking in on him and making sure he's provided with, you know, various things, but he's been referred to the North Richmond Centre. He doesn't seem keen to take up the offer. And, you know, sometimes these communities can be difficult to engage with for a whole variety of reasons, but they're also the people who fall through the cracks. I think Hawkesbury Helping Hands has been really busy relocating people who were along the river and things like that. So are we in touch with Wentworth on top of this, or are we still at the evacuation centre stage?

I thought at the evacuation centre stage, the process for a crisis response is that it's managed in the first instance by the Department of Communities and Justice. So our team has been in regular contact with Platform Youth Services and Wentworth to determine their capacity at the moment to continue to provide specialist homelessness outreach services. So, for instance, if there is a person who's currently staying in a vehicle at Wilberforce, they do have workers over that side of the river who would actually be able to engage with them in that space. So very happy to take further information on that following the meeting and provide service. But the process is that those social and outreach service providers are in the same boat as Council. They essentially wait for the information to come back from the coordination points.

Thanks. I'm just worried that we've got people drifting around that haven't engaged with services, and that the longer that takes, the more marginalised those people become, I suppose. Have we heard anything about liaison with other agencies? I know we've had the SES really busy, the RFS have been helping out with supplies and a few other tasks. Have we heard anything more from the Federal Government about defence coming on board? It seems that they would be really useful for some of the debris clearing and even some of the road, like the temporary road maintenance and things. Have we heard anything about that?

Council has not been formally advised of any ADF involvement with our operations. Obviously, we're not coordinating the overall response though.

Yeah. Yes, my understanding is that the State has to ask first, the Federal Government's made the offer, and my understanding is that the State then has to ask. So maybe it's something to add to the list for asking for. Do we know, do we know how many people we've got without telecommunications access, or what telecommunications access we've got to some of these outlying areas?

I don't know that we're going to have numbers on who doesn't have telecommunications access. No

That's a bit like, put your hand up if you're not here, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah

Does anyone want to answer that at all? We've got particular— I haven't actually had reports from particular communities that they can't get in touch with us, but they probably wouldn't, so I'm not reading that anywhere either, though no one else is telling me that. But, Mr. Organ?

Look, I don't have an answer to that specific question. What I can add, though, in terms of a whole range of coordination issues, so in terms of the emergency management realm, there is a local emergency operations centre, there is a regional emergency operations centre, and then, in fact, the state emergency operations centre has been activated. So a lot of these issues are being dealt with by various agencies. Those requests are going up the line in all sorts of respects. Each of those operations centres has liaison officers with a whole— I'll get into jargon, unfortunately— with the functional areas, so that would be telecommunications, water, Sydney Water, SES, RFS. All of the agencies are represented at each of those levels, and those communications are basically feeding up.

So is anything being missed? Probably, but it's not for want of trying and the commitment of resources from the various functional areas to all of those issues. So I know that's probably a bit of a non-answer, but a lot of these things are being dealt with. But probably also just add something to Councillor Wheeler's earlier question about, you know, state road access and so on. Some of those things will be very difficult. As I said, you can see some of the damage that we have in Greens Road and Wollombi Road will be difficult in terms of getting access to those. Council— it was a council contractor that started work on Packer Road, so we are actually out there doing, starting to do maintenance with local and available crews.

Thanks

Mr. Organ, that's good to know. And I think the community is, it's a real boost for the community to see that there's efforts already, that this isn't something that they're going to have to wait a while for. I know the people that I spoke to who used Packer Road today were really, really pleased that something had happened. So it's good to know that it's us engaged out there. Do we know how many communities we've got without power now? It's been a small miracle, I have to say, west of the river, that we've had power throughout. It's made all the difference to us, particularly around the provision of things like sewer and just being able to have a hot shower and that sort of thing. So do we know how many places we've got without functioning electricity? I think Lower Portland's still out.

Yeah, we'll take that on notice. The only reports I've got, and just to tell you anecdotally, we had, I think we had power outage at Mulgrave at one point, but I think that was restored. Yeah, we had, I had a lot of people calling me saying, I'm going to run out of fuel for my generator, and that's my only access to power, and we were trying to solve those on a case-by-case basis, as well as looking at how we can get fuel to those suburbs. But again, I've not had any widespread reports of a suburb out of power, but we'll sort of take that on notice.

Sure, and the final question I've got is around provision of support, and again, this isn't a council task, but it's us that are frequently on the ground, is provision of support to elderly and disabled people who may not have carers, their carers able to get west of the river. I've heard several cases of elderly people who perhaps aren't normally in touch with their neighbours or who are a bit prickly about the neighbours coming to help. Do we know if The Department of Communities and Justice have a handle on this, or is this something that we need to be looking at?

I refer that again to the Manager, Community Services.

Sorry, is the Manager, Community Services available to answer another question?

Everybody is under the pump. Sorry , I should have

Batched those questions It's okay.

We'll take that on notice if that's okay. That's fine. Thank you

Councillor Zamprogno? Yes, thank you, Mr Mayor. Two brief things. I've received reports that some people who are on tank water, those tanks, although ironically full, are probably contaminated. Is there something in our plan that might permit us to offer free water for people to refill their tanks? That's question one. Actually, I'll deal with them separately, so answer for that one first.

So can we provide free water to you by transport or access to

Well, either access to or transport, in the sense that for some people that have tank water, ironically their tanks are full, but if the water is contaminated, I'm wondering whether that could perhaps be —

Yeah, we did sort of take that one on notice earlier. Oh, sorry. Yeah , I apologise. That's all right.

And question two: considering that you're working on a mayoral minute asking whether particular agencies can include certain communities in their reporting, I received a report that the flood gauge at Yarramundi doesn't appear on the Bureau of Meteorology's website. There is apparently a gauge, but you've got to dig deep into the bowels of a different website to find that flood gauge information. And it's been reported by several members of that community that it's a curious omission. We might just request to have the Yarramundi flood gauge restored to the Bureau's palette of flood gauges.

Happy to take that forward. Councillor Ross, you want to speak again? Yes,

Thank you, Mr Mayor. The questions raised by Councillor Wheeler in regard to the social services and the displacement of people. On Tuesday night last, we were informed that a number of people had been afforded temporary accommodation by Maroo in Kurrajong. I would hope that for next week's meeting that the other information regarding displaced people would include the consideration of the Maroo site as well, please.

Sure.

Thank you. And now, just going back to my original representations, would you please consider this business of flood being somewhat enhanced to encompass these other, if you like, affected elements in the scheme of things that have occurred in regard to the landslip and loss of vegetation and so on, please.

I'm not sure I understand the question, because I think what point one is saying is that until we hear about what the state government wants to do with waste, we're going to offer free waste at the tip. So I don't know how we could sort of weave into that about the landslip. I'm not really sure if I'm understanding.

Well, you've described it as flood , and that's not strictly flood, is it? That's the point to which I was alluding.

It refers to the document on the next page, the attachment. So until we get more details about that attachment named flood assistance, which details their waste plan.

We will offer it for free at the tip is the idea.

Okay. I would have felt that a more embracive term would be more appropriate. Thank you.

Thanks.

There's a few people with hands up that have spoken. Anyone want to speak again?

Yes, please.

Okay. Well, because you're the deputy mayor, you can go three times, but we might draw a line there for other people at twice then.

Okay, sorry. They're mostly questions. I just wanted to say briefly in regard to what Councillor Sanbruno raised about the Yarramundi flood gauge, that was something that the Floodplain Committee had raised last November as an action to get fixed, but that must have got lost somewhere along the line. And also on that point, can we ascertain whether the flood gauge was put in at South Creek, and are we making sure that we're getting the data of the flooding from South Creek to be recorded? That was another action from the committee last year, and this would have been a good opportunity to have made sure that we're getting that data. It's very important in the future of flooding. Okay,

Thank you. We've also got another question. We'll make this the last one from Councillor Rasmussen.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Councillor Rasmussen has asked, how will we get rubbish trucks to Yarramundi through Penrith to Springwood into Yarramundi, or will Blue Mountains do it for us? Refer that to the Director City Planning.

I might have to take them on notice. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Well, I don't think a right of reply is necessary, so we'll move, put the motion to a vote. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour, Councillor Conolly, Councillors Proknik, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Ross, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Richards, Councillor Calvert. Absent for the vote were Councillor Tree, Councillor Gary, Councillor Reynolds, and Councillor Rasmuson is here, but we'll just count him as an abstention, I guess. Yeah, I'm sure he's in favour, but he needs to be on camera to vote, I believe.

Or if Councillor Rasmuson, if you want to indicate whether you're in favour or not in the chat, that would work. I'll take— we'll accept that if you can do that quickly.

I think numerically it's carried, so we'll just count him as abstaining, yeah, and declare it carried. That was the only business for tonight's meeting. Thank you everyone again for responding on short notice and getting together, and we'll stay in touch over the coming days.