Environment Committee Meeting - 13 April 2021

Welcome to the Environment Committee for this, the 13th day of 2021. My name is Andrew Kearns, and I am the Manager of Strategic Planning at Hawkesbury City Council. The committee members here today are Councillor Patrick Conolly, Mayor of Hawkesbury City Council, Councillor Amanda Kotlash, Councillor Sarah Richards, and Councillor Nathan Zamprogno. I'd like to start with an acknowledgement of Indigenous heritage. Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, and we pay respect to all Elders past, present and emerging. There's some housekeeping matters. So, in terms of emergency procedures, committee members and members of the public attending the meeting in council chambers are advised that in the event of an emergency, you will be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit, following the guidance of our warden.

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In terms of people addressing the meeting, for the benefit of those who will be addressing the committee, it is expected that you will 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 the meeting and any answers given in response to questions from the committee. As a courtesy to others, it is requested that mobile phones either be turned off or turned to silent. As all committee members are in attendance, there are no apologies. As required by the Code of Conduct, committee members are required to disclose any pecuniary and/or non-pecuniary interests in relation to matters on today's agenda. Are there any interests to disclose? No interests

So in terms of items subject to public address, these matters will be dealt with after the election of the chairperson.

Committee meeting attendees who have not registered will be asked by the chairperson at the end of the meeting of the hearing registered speakers if there are any further speakers that wish to address the meeting, and may speak for a period at the discretion of the chairperson. When called, please speak clearly. At the end of the submission, please remain available to permit the committee to ask questions. So the first item of business on the agenda, item one, is the election of chairperson. And as returning officer, I would like to call for nominations for the position of chairperson. Nominate Councillor Kotlash. Councillor Kotlash, do you accept the nomination? Yes, I do. Thank you. And do we have a seconder? Councillor Stambrogno. Do we have any other nominations?

No other nominations. Well, that being the case, I declare Councillor Kotlash as the chair and ask Councillor Kotlash to take the chair.

Thank you, Mr. Kearns. Thank you, everyone. We've had declarations of interest, so we will now move on to the second item, item 002 , which is in regard to electric vehicle charging infrastructure. And we are lucky to have a public speaker, Mr. Snedden. If you'd like to come up and address us on this issue, that would be wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to speak on this matter. I'll start by saying I've actually been driving and flying electric cars, boats and aircraft for over 30 years. Until four years ago, I bought a BMW i3 range extender, and so I'm speaking in favour of this report. Four years ago, I stopped using a radio control set for the car that I'm now driving, or one of the cars. I have bypassed the charging dilemma, however, by upgrading my house solar and batteries. This has allowed 35,000 kilometres so far of off-grid charging. So I don't normally go long distances, so I quite amicably do this. If need be, I can charge overnight at 1.4 kilowatt hours. The car supplier actually was upset with me because I opted not to have a fast charger unit installed.

I just don't need it. So I'm speaking on personal knowledge as to what goes on, and I'm regularly asked when cars are going to come down in price enough to buy them. So battery range of my car is approximately 250 k's, with a petrol range extension of 150 kilometres. So there are few electric cars in the district. Mine's one of a handful. Mine, to my knowledge, is the only BMW i3 that's in the area. There's a number of Teslas, and I believe a couple of Nissan Leafs. So at the moment, we're starting at the bottom of a rising hill of needing new infrastructure provided. I would make the comment that in the early days of petrol cars in the UK, prior to 1900, if you were out in the country and ran out of petrol, you had to go to the local pharmacy because petrol came in cans.

Also, your mechanic was the local blacksmith if you broke down. So all of these things have had to be provided, and this is coming with electric vehicles. So at the moment, there are, apart from a few electric cars in the district, there are also nil incentives to own an electric vehicle in Australia as is overseas. There are no registration discounts. There are no reduced sales taxes. There are no drops on luxury taxes for high-priced vehicles. I'd be grudge paying $7,000 on my i3 to replace the Daihatsu Charade, which I was told at that stage was worth $1,000. In fact, I gifted it to the Central Coast Gliding Club rather than trying to sell it. Other incentives due to nil carbon dioxide evolution in cities or city congestion are available in Australia.

So if you want to own an electric car, you've got to put the money in, and in my case, I had an inheritance and I thought it was the right thing to do. Many persons want to buy these cars, but cost is prohibitive still. The cheapest is the little MG at about $47,000. For many potential owners, charging can be problematic. Home charging often is not possible on off-peak or at lower tariffs as is available overseas. This is timely to be discussing the charging infrastructure, a potential source of range anxiety for many people, and also as we're a tourist destination, I know Mary Buckett regularly discusses this because if you have an electric vehicle, there's nowhere in this area that I'm aware of that you can plug in and charge up.

I'm pleased to see Council addressing this matter before a crisis starts with new EVs soon to be arriving in larger numbers. Home charging is ideal for many people, but not for all. Slow charging off a solar system, as I do, is one ideal if you can afford the system. However, if you're a short traveller, fast travel off a modest-sized solar system is possible, but unless you have batteries, that has to be done during the daytime, not convenient for everybody. Off-peak charging is possible overseas, as per hot water systems. You can make arrangements with the electricity supplier, I believe possibly in Victoria, but this is something we need to be considering here and pushing in our overall environmental strategy with our move to zero in the future.

Fast charging at home is possible if the home power is upgraded. Many homes will not take the six or seven times high power charging that are possible on a lot of vehicles. So for non-home charging owners, commercial providers are installing fast chargers. Now, I'm aware of at least four. Tesla, for example, puts in fast chargers. They're encouraging their car owners, and I'm aware that in some cases you don't pay for the power you put in. Tesla are aware of that in the price of the car. Mind you, if you're paying 150 grand for the car, it might be nice to get something a bit extra. NRMA, certainly they're putting in charges. In fact, I'm aware that council was offered the possibility about a year or so ago, but wasn't taken up.

I'm not sure for quite what reasons. There are at least two other charging companies, and some of these are providing ultra-rapid charging. Another complication with charging electric cars has been a variety of various plugs. That has apparently been rationalised in Australia in the last year or so. So if you were to rock up with some of the European chargers on a car, you couldn't plug into any of the commercial units that are in Australia. So these four above are now installing this infrastructure themselves. I don't know how they're making money. They're obviously charging somehow. But quite frankly, I urge council to consider this avenue to provide charging at no ratepayer cost. I think it's a really good idea.

You don't have to be picking the winner. The commercial people are out there doing it for you. They also provide, my understanding is, the electrical upgrades. Some of the superfast chargers now will recharge, say, a 400-kilometre Tesla to about 80% in less than an hour. So again, you need to really upgrade the power supplies, and these people know what they're doing. Now, the other thing that I would urge also in any of these charging considerations is that, following along what we've already done with our major power purchase of 100% renewable, we should also be insisting that any charges provided should also be done with 100% renewable power, and that way we automatically meet our net zero emissions target.

And as the note shows— Transport CO2 is very significant in the area, so every car that comes in, if they're going to be charging off council area charges, will automatically wipe that share of the emissions off that vehicle. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Sinn, that was great. Would you like to accept some questions if there's some

Questions

From the floor? Certainly

The main one: when are they going to be cheap enough for me to afford?

Questions. Well, we'll see. Councillor Conolly, Mayor Conolly.

So my read—I just thought, since you're the only one here, might just take the time to run this by you as well while you've got the chance to talk. When I read through this, I thought potentially a way forward would be to ask the staff to come back to us with some broad principles around what kinds of things would need to be considered in terms of location, like in terms of, you know, just from a compliance point of view, what kind of things we need to keep in mind. And then at that point, we then, you know, invite and hopefully get a lot more people from the community to come and tell us where they would like to see them with those broad principles in mind, so that we can then look at what that policy we might develop looks like.

And I take your point that's part of it; the other part of it is what model do you use to get those charges in. Just while you're here, what do you think of that as a way forward?

Councillor Conolly. Again, this is one of these things where there's many answers to a whole lot of different problems. If you're living in a large block of flats, maybe you can have chargers underneath. That's one avenue to consider. It also, for many drivers, if they're only doing short ranges, a recharge might only take half an hour or so when you're doing shopping. So the tourist centres down around Bowral, et cetera, are tending to put fast chargers in. I know there's a Tesla charger down there somewhere, but they can get 80% of recharge in about an hour. So a lot of people would stop and have a meal or something or other. So it depends on the agenda of the person. When the General Motors Volt was being developed, their plug-in hybrid, they opted for a battery range of about 80 to 90 kilometres because they studied, and that was an average commute.

So if you're plugging in at home, that's relatively easy to accommodate overnight, just on a standard lead. My car charges 1.4 kilowatts, which is about, say, one and a half bars on a radiator. So fast charging is not the answer for all people. If you're wanting a service station type scenario, you must have fast chargers. If they're smaller units, so some of them are also covering the roofs in solar panels, although, quite frankly, the amount of power that they can get out of those in one day is probably only going to recharge about one or two cars on fast charging. So there's not all answers for everybody. People that have to have on-street parking overseas in the UK, there are actually power poles with the power at the bottom where you can plug in and charge.

I'd be really nervous about having my car plugged in with a power cable out in the open, but it seems to work in some areas. So the trouble is there are multiple questions looking for multiple answers from what I see. It is not going to be a black and white, one-size-fits-all answer.

Yes, indeed.

Thank you. Is that sufficient?

Any other questions? No? I'll ask a question, Mr Smith. When I read this information in the business paper, I just thought to myself, well, if you had an electric vehicle like you do, you wouldn't probably take it shopping and charge it up. But having heard you speak, you might actually do that. That might be a convenient way for you to keep your electric vehicle charged up. So you'd go and do your shopping, you plug it in somewhere in the car park. I was thinking that most of the charging stations that we might have in the Hawkesbury would be associated with visitors or tourism or something of that nature. But it just seemed to me that that might not necessarily be the case.

What's happening overseas is that shopping centres are putting chargers in so that you can plug in. If you're only a short-range driver, honestly, for the last hundred years, we could have been driving around with lead-acid forklift battery technology. And as a food industry worker, I've had to deal with electric forklifts for 50 years of my life. And if you want to do less than 100 k's in a day, that technology would still be functional. It's just that— Petroleum , petrol, has about the highest energy density of anything that you can conceive of, barring nuclear power. And so the petrol engine allows you to—lithium fuel is equivalent to a rather large box of dynamite if you mix it with enough oxygen.

It's scary how much energy is there. And one of the problems with batteries is the, well, the lithium polymer batteries come up to that. But weight for weight, they're only about a sixth of the energy capacity of petrol. So petrol and hydrocarbons have been a dream fuel, and we are having to learn to go the other way. Other technology in electric cars has been the microelectronics, the computers that let you power the, control the things, but high-power electronics to drive. You've got to remember these cars run at 300 volts. They're not 12-volt plug-ins like you clip off your car battery. You can get seriously dead if you play around with the wiring. And then the other thing is the rare earth motors, the new motors, etcetera, that allow you to develop massive power from a quite compact source.

So we're now at the stage where the electric vehicles and the technology are rivaling internal combustion motors. The range is extending. I have to tell you that in 1970, when I was doing electrochemistry in tech, lithium polymer batteries did not exist. They weren't invented until a Japanese guy about 1983 first developed them. The only way you could use lithium was as a one-shot non-rechargeable item. And then lithium metal will spontaneously catch fire in air if you don't look after it properly. So that's also one of the nervousness about having them. But quite frankly, if you were to invent petrol now, I don't think you'd be—I think you'd be locked up. If you were to say you were going to be driving around with 50 to 100 litres of this highly volatile, highly flammable, potentially explosive material, and as for what you're doing with the roads, we're going to cover a tenth of the city in these black roads.

We're going to kill more people in firearm deaths in the United States or are dying of COVID in Australia. Now, you'd be locked up, I'm sure. But we live with these things, and the technology is moving on. I'm not a Luddite. I choose not to have a computer system at home. I can program in BASIC still. But I'm doing what a lot of people want to do. I've been fortunate. I have had intuitive inheritances, so I'm actually doing it. I have trouble explaining it to people because they get jealous of what I've done. I haven't paid my electricity account in ten years.

Oh wow. Okay, you're an early adopter. Well, thank you very much, Mr. ... That's excellent. Thank you.

Discussion, Councillor Conolly.

Yeah, I had a question first, if that's all right. Could

I just interrupt you and get you to speak into the— Yeah, sorry. You might know this, but I can't hear you properly.

I noticed in the community engagement section of the report, it mentions that 33% of respondents to Council's achieving net zero emissions and water efficiency survey indicated they're planning to purchase an electric or hybrid vehicle, which I found quite interesting. Just wanted to know if we have on hand roughly how many people completed that survey.

Mr. Cairns.

Small pocket. Yeah.

Around 110. Okay.

Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah, as I indicated to when I mentioned to Mr. Sen, I think the good way forward, I think we need to do more than just recommend back to Council that they develop a policy. I think it's quite reasonable we should have a policy, but I think the Council probably expects the community to do a bit more of the work than just recommend that back. I think a good way forward would be if we were to ask for a further report to come back here that just set out in a little bit more detail on this, but not too much more detail. What are the key requirements? What are the key considerations for that policy? So, you know, in terms of the Roads Act and, you know, proximity to other utilities, whatever it is that we need to consider, you know, traffic and everything else, as well as perhaps some further discussion of the ownership options.

And then perhaps for the next meeting, we'll do some work as councillors at promoting the fact that we're considering this and ask people to come here and tell us what kind of locations they would consider appropriate once they've had the benefit of that information of those guiding principles. So I did send something in similar to that. I might just change it slightly once it comes up, just to be painful.

So I think I'll probably—it's not that clear—recommend that, so request that staff provide a report, I think in point two. is what we're really trying to say.

And I think the other thing I did mention, I think it would be good—we've sort of listed that there's a few councils that have one of these policies. Maybe if we could just have those policies just attached to the report as well.

Yeah, that's probably the only change.

Seconded. Seconded, Councillor Richards. Thank you.

I'm very intrigued. I don't have huge knowledge of this area, but if there's a way we can do this that has, you know, private sector ownership and just partnering, that makes the whole situation a lot easier. It just becomes about developing a policy to guide where that happens. Yes,

Thank you, Councillor Conolly. I'll just add something to that, if I may. I think having heard what Mr. Sneddon said about private ownership of cars and just using your cars locally has changed my perspective on the types of people that will actually be using this new technology. And I think it is probably inevitable that we're all going to be probably driving electric vehicles or hybrids at some stage in the near future. But just how we go about rolling out this sort of technology and who's actually going to be using this is an interesting point . So I agree with you. If the private sector may be attached to some sort of tourism outfit or even one of the automotive peak bodies like the NRMA or— Or the Australian Electric Vehicle, Electric Car Association, or those sorts of groups may be interested or have already done this in some other areas.

So I think that's something that will be really beneficial in that report. I think once we get that information back, I agree with you that then we can start to talk about what sort of policy we might be able to develop. So I think that's a really good way forward, and I will support that recommendation.

Any other discussion, Councillors and Progenia?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I support this initiative, and I also support the altered form of words that gives more practical application to what this committee is going to recommend that we do to move forward. I'm aware of four electric vehicle charging stations within our LGA. There's one at the Crown Plaza, there's one at the Vineyard Hotel, there's one at GT Tooling, and another one at Skyline Solar, both based in Mulgrave. So this is obviously taking off, and I suppose the lesson from those four examples is that they have been introduced privately by people who feel that there is an economic inducement and attractiveness to offering charging on their premises. And I think that really shows the way in terms of what we're going to do.

In June 2019, there was a tripartite arrangement between Randwick, Waverley and Woollahra Councils who undertook to implement an electric vehicle charging program, street charging in this case, and they partnered with Jet Charge to try and enable that. And I don't know where that project is up to nearly two years on, but it certainly shows that local councils can play a productive role. In encouraging this kind of infrastructure, I'm not convinced that we have an overriding need to provide this as public infrastructure, but we can certainly partner with organisations to encourage the take-up of these in other private locations. I think we will quickly move to a point where the underground car parks of most of our shopping centres will have charging stations.

But there's a variety of issues that we'll need to look at concerning the style of those charges, whether they're rapid charges or slow charges, as Mr. Snedden indicated, and what regulation or protection that we provide around those to provide guidance and encouragement. So I commend it to the committee.

Thank you. Councillor St. Prokopenko. If there's no further debate— oh, I actually had one thing I wanted to mention. I'm not sure, but is it possible that in the future we're going to need to have some sort of public infrastructure that deals with large trucks that are electrically powered? Because it seems to me that in Europe there are a lot of big, big trucks that are fully electric, and they whiz around the European roads. And I just wonder whether we should, just while we're doing this exercise, just look into that as well as just to be on the front foot for when we actually have those sorts of trucks on the road and how that's going to pan out. So just as an added bit of work, just for the sake of being on the front foot, that would be good too. So without any more debate, I'll put the motion.

All in favour? Okay, unanimous. Thank you.

I have to read out names

Yes. In favour was Councillor Conolly, Councillors Amprono and Councillor Richards. Declare it carried. Oh,

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Amprono. Yes, I'm here. All in favour, including me. Thank you.

Okay, so now we'll move on to the next item, which is item three , and we have Mr. Snedden again, as a public speaker, to address us on this item, which is water management and quality.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. This item covers a huge area of items, so I can only hit a few that I'm aware of, but I'm pleased to see this report continuing the work that the previous committee system was undertaking. First of all, all of this interacts with our riverine environment, as if we hadn't noticed a riverine environment in the last couple of weeks, and the complications that we have with that: flooding, the extremes, the drought. Had we had the flood last year a month or two earlier, we wouldn't have had the bushfires to contend with, I would suggest. So we're living in a complex area, and all of this is part of it. So...

So we have the riverine environment. We also have Council's own water reuse and environmental activities, and I'd like to sort of highlight those in this. We're moving towards the net emissions strategy, and Council is doing really good work, in my opinion, in wastewater and water efficiency strategies. I'm seeing things on the ground. Now, I personally have had significant interactions in my working life and personal time with many areas touched in this report. Hawkesbury Council, in my opinion, is setting a good example in a cost-effective fashion in in-house water use economies. We're doing a whole lot of things, water efficiency, etc. I regularly read the reports. We're also doing other things like providing drinking fountains, etc., things that seem to have disappeared completely about 15 years ago in most areas of councils.

And that also then has an effect on reducing packaging, people walking around with plastic bottles. It's just fascinating to see people walking around with PET and aluminium bottles, whereas they used to have a pack of cigarettes or something else. So that's a very interesting change in my lifetime, in these people's lifestyles. Hawkesbury Council, we must not forget, also runs a sewage system. We have two sewage treatment plants with significant water recycle, and we're growing that capacity. So Council is leading the community, demonstrating some of what can be done in industry and in personal life. So you are leading by example, and I commend you for it, and you're doing it cost-effectively.

As with solar, it's being done with significant savings to the bottom line, if not at least staying neutral. The report also points out that Council cannot do all the community water recycle work. It is in fact a relatively small

Water user in the total volume used of fresh water in the Hawkesbury. So one of the things that I had trouble with when I saw the initial questionnaire go out is it seemed to indicate that Hawkesbury Council was actually using all the water in the Hawkesbury, but it's a tiny amount. But people are still under that impression when you talk about water economies and savings that Council is the big user. So they just don't see themselves as part of the scenario . I'm also very pleased to see Sydney Water is now indicating willingness to interact with the work being discussed here. They are, after all, the major water supplier of drinking water in the Hawkesbury. They're a large sewage system operator.

They are a significant water recycler from the Richmond Sewage Treatment Plant. The major users from that plant were, and I'm not sure whether they still are, Richmond Golf Course and the agricultural activities at the University of Western Sydney. In fact, I worked for Memtec for a while in the 1990s, and I was stationed doing some work regarding fibre in sewage affecting Memtec plant. And I was told by the workers over there that the golf course and the ag college had 50% each of the water that came off the plant. But in drought times, it was a question of who had the bigger 50%. So stormwater, and the other thing is there's also a stormwater recycling operation in Windsor that's run by Sydney Water.

I'm not quite sure where that is, but certainly it was highlighted some years ago. There are several large ring dams that the university has that water can be stored in in quite large quantities for later use. So that gives Sydney Water a good buffer for their water recycle. Water recycle, however, is not a black and white easy scenario. It's complicated by the cost versus availability of water. You have too much water in wet times off a recycled plant because people cut their use; they don't need it. And there's insufficient water in the drought, as I instance, which 50% is bigger for the university or the golf course when there's a drought on. In wet times, the golf course probably doesn't need any, so the university has capacity.

So with our systems, one of the problems I know discussing with staff is that variability. Also then you have, if you're in agricultural use, you have seasonal variations. And again, you can have peaks and troughs in demand. And so if you're putting out a steady amount of water, how do you balance out a peak versus a trough? And then you have to balance the costs of what you're doing versus the direct cost of a farmer extracting water from the river or some other body, etc. So you have a difficult balancing act. Unless you've had to deal with it, you just have no idea of what's coming. So it's difficult for staff to plan and be rational about what's going. But overall, I think Council is doing a very good job.

As I said, it's cost effective. You're looking after the ratepayers. So I'm impressed, highly. Thank you. Well,

Thank you, Mr. Snedden. That's good to hear. Has anybody got any questions for Mr. Snedden? No, no questions. Thank you, Mr Snowden.

Councillor Conolly. Mayor Conolly. Fine

Just had a question from reading this report. I wasn't quite clear on what Council has asked the committee to do specifically. I understand that Council has been quite clear that every referral to committee should have a question and a deadline. I just wondered what the question that this is referred to—what question was referred to this committee regarding water quality, and what timeframe Council wanted advice on.

Mr Kearns.

So the question from the Council resolution was basically on the topic of water management and quality, and it was basically to look at the issue as required. Essentially stemmed from previous discussion that—it was actually interesting—the Waste Management Advisory Committee, where discussions ensued in regard to various programs and various activities associated with water quality management, and there was calls for coming together in terms of a number of agencies and looking at the matter of water quality as a whole. So that's essentially its origins. In terms of the actual timing, I would have to take that on notice, yeah.

Thank you. I think it's, yeah, I read through the report and I wasn't really sure—like I said, I wasn't really sure what question we're trying to answer or what advice Council… And it sounds like this didn't really come from Council. It's come from, if I'm understanding that answer correctly, it's just morphed through different committees to be something that's discussed.

I think, yeah , I'd be open to people's thoughts. I've actually been inclined just to go with receiving note the report, report it back to Council and ask Council if there's any specific matters requiring advice , rather than just continue to discuss something because it's been discussed. If there's no specific action, then I think we should stop reporting on it. Yes

Thank you, Councillor Conolly. I agree with you. One of the things that struck me is that there are so many issues in this, and we really need to start unpacking it a bit. And one thought I had is that we could separate the Hawkesbury Coastal Management Plan and actually deal with that as a separate item in future because that's got a lot in it as well. So not only do we have a lot of items, but within that plan, there's going to be a lot of items, and I'd like staff to be able to ask us specific questions within that plan. So we'll park that as a separate item for the future. But for all the other things, I think we have to be a bit more specific about where we want to head with this because at the moment we've got a whole list of things that talks about water quality, water quantity, water use.

You know, there's just so many things. And even I think there was a part of this that was concerned with our planning instruments and how we're going to deal with water in our DCP and LEP revisions. That's a huge task. So we have to sort of start to unpack this and break it down. And I agree, if we could just send this back and get a much clearer idea from either Council or the staff about what we actually might need to — To deliberate and to get community feedback on, and to get other agency staff to come and address the committee, and we start to really work out the best way forward for that. So I would suggest that that's a good way forward.

Would you like some words for a motion? Yep. So I think we just go, one, we put the recommendation, receive and note this report, and two, that the matter, that this report be provided to Council for consideration as to whether any further advice is required.

Okay, yes. Would you also include a point three to say that we deal with the Hawkesbury Coastal Management Plan as a separate item in future? Because it is a big plan, and we're committing to all sorts of things within that plan.

I've no issue with that, but my understanding, just as an important order, would be that the Council needs to refer that to the committee.

Yes

Okay. The committee deciding to do that. Yep.

Okay. Thank you. Is there any more? Okay, thanks. That was seconded by Councillor Richards. Any more discussion?

Yes, just a question, Madam Chair. I mean, reading through the report, what jumps out to me is the gap that perhaps we've fallen into because we're ineligible for funding under the current legislation, because the legislation has been amended, and therefore we can't get any money. And although it says that we have contracted to the Estry's and Catchments team of the DPIE to assess water quality, I just want to know whether we are at a point of deficiency until we have developed and presented A new arrangement in concert with Hornsby Central Coast, Northern Beaches, Kuring-gai and the Hills. Could I get some commentary from staff about that, because I want to understand more about that.

So our existing Upper Hawkesbury Coastal Zone Management Plan, which was approved back in 2014, so that's still able to be used to support grant applications through the Estuaries Program until December of this year, December 2021. So we're certainly using that to apply for funding when that becomes available. Until then, after that, we can't use that until there is a new Coastal Management Plan prepared under the new framework to apply for grant funding. So we would essentially be looking to apply for continuation of that report card in terms of water quality monitoring prior to the December 2021. Okay,

Thank you for that clarification. I mean, monitoring water quality, I think, is one of those core things that we should be doing environmentally to be looking after our waterways. Well, I remember as an educator that the excellent Streamwatch program that was pioneered in 1990 went for decades until the state government cut its funding in 2012, gutted its funding by 100 grand, transferred it to the Australian Museum and took the word citizen out of citizen science. So anything we can do to be making up that gap, I think is very welcome. And I agree that, you know, the Coastal Management Plan is sufficiently important that we need to be seeking direction from the council and have that referred to us so that we can take that up in detail. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillors and Proctor. Is there any more discussion? If that's the case, I'll then put the motion. Is everybody clear what the motion is, or would you like it on the screen?

I can probably remember it. It's clear? Okay. All in favour? Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Kotlash. All in favour, carried. Thank you.

We'll now move on to item four, which is the zero litter to ocean policy.

And we have Mr. Snedden to address us. Thank you, Mr.

Snedden

Thank you. I'm pleased to speak to this matter. This is ongoing from the previous committee system. First up front, I should admit that I have actually tested dairy discharge to the Hunter River for several years as a laboratory worker. I've also done five years of stream watch along South Creek underneath the railway bridge at Mulgrave. And I agree with what Councillor Zamprogno said about the stream watch system being gutted completely. There's still a few bodies that I'm aware of testing. As a voluntary activity, it certainly provides data, but unfortunately the museum just didn't seem to get the idea of what was going on. So many, many data points and sets of collectors have just fallen by the wayside.

So anyway, yeah. The ongoing waste into water course seems to be a never-ending story, intertwined with poor personal waste habits, for example littering, dumping, etc. The subject that's addressed here, quite frankly, is frustratingly nebulous, and eventual death by a thousand cuts looms without action on many fronts, and at least we are doing something, and other government authorities are trying to do things. So you're also covered, as with the other two subjects I've spoken to, by state and federal legislation, a lot of requirements to do things. All of these things sort of seem to be looming out of the dark if one hasn't been following. All the listed items are relevant and also intersect with the currently hot topic of plastics pollution in our oceans, which a lot of the young people have really taken up the cudgels on.

Education of the young at schools seems to be an important driver for future adult attitudes, especially regarding littering and generally dumping, as well as the pester power the kids have to change adult attitudes to recycling and litter. On the other hand, I tended to pester my kids more than they did me because I was already doing most of what they were taught about. Now, as a food technologist, I also have a few ideas regarding food packaging in particular. I'd like to see deposits on all takeaway food and beverage containers. All takeaway food and drink containers should be non-plastic, readily biodegradable materials, paper, wood pulp, etc., unless of course they were very expensive items such as stainless steel milkshake cups or aluminium cans that could be readily melted down and recycled.

They would also contain enough value to be worthwhile picking up for a bit of pocket money by kids. I'd like to see non-degradable eating utensils and straws. They are coming in, I know. Queensland's in the process of banning... Plastic straws, I think South Australia's done it. I'd also like to see lids on beverage containers, food trays, etc., from fast food restaurants permanently attached to their bases. In other words, single units that don't wind up as two items of litter rather than one if they're left around. I'd like to see legislation to allow clean-up charging to distributors of branded packaging, especially retail food service. These containers are regularly on the roadsides of the Hawkesbury.

There's quite a few along Cox Street at the moment, near the swimming pool, for example. There is no financial incentive for private clean-up, unlike the deposit return containers, returning beverage containers that the kids and others pick up. There's a long way to go, but this report at least starts the process to stop what's on land making its way to the long-suffering oceans and our local water bodies. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Sneddon. I'm assuming you'd take questions if there were any. Oh, please. Thank you. Councillors and proponent.

Mr. Sneddon, I agree with everything that you say, but I wonder what your thoughts are about how any of those things that you mentioned can be taken up as a local ordinance. These appear to me to be matters that have to be dealt with at other tiers of government. So, in other words, to ask you to be practical about the point of application for us, what do you think council can do?

Councillor Zempron, you're working along with schools. We have compost programs. We are actually doing a lot on the ground. Our waste education officers have been doing sterling jobs. I regularly hear from members of the public unsolicited about things that they're doing. So attitude is certainly changing. I did mention at the start this is a nebulous, frustratingly nebulous area. There are so many things to be addressed. But if you don't pick off at least one or two things at a time, you get nowhere. So the dilemma is you can't change federal or state legislation, but you can at least pester about it, or at least indicate you're not happy. So unless things are done at the bottom or indicated up, there will be no will or indication that anybody is unhappy with the current situation.

So again, this is education in schools, pester power of parents, et cetera. Pester power at home is a marvellous driver in domestic situations. It helps sorting recyclables versus composting materials, et cetera. So again, local government's role to some extent, in my opinion, is almost like kids' pester power. But we're in there pitching. It's not that we're sitting back doing nothing, but it is frustrating. The process and the pace seems to be glacial with so many things, as in much of local government or government. But if you don't do anything, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Thank you , Mr. Snedden Thanks.

Councillor Conolly.

Thank you. Reading through this, I can certainly see how we've come to the conclusion that we should recommend to Council that it's not feasible for us to do this on our own, and I don't dispute that. I think, though, that potentially what we can do— Even if we can't have a zero litre to river target that's going to be achieved, that's potentially too ambitious. I still think it'd be good for us to recommend back to Council what we can do, and that can be potentially looking at what planned actions we already have in other plans or things we're already doing that are reducing litter to river, but also what are some of the low-hanging fruit that we can actually influence. So I thought potentially a way forward would be that we note this report, but then request a further report that could provide some ideas around what some of that low-hanging fruit might be.

I'll get some better words in a second. I have sent something in, so probably just use that motion that was sent in. And then the idea would be, though, at the next meeting to really do some publicity on this and the fact we're considering this, and that we want to hear from people because we don't necessarily have all the ideas, and there are people that are really passionate about this in the community. So really put out there that we're going to have another meeting. It's a public meeting. We want to hear from you on what are the, you know, and it might be the five things we can do, we can do now without federal or state funding, so that we can then recommend back to Council that probably end up still recommending that we can't have a zero litter to river policy without significant funding, but these are a few things we can do right now and we think Council should take up.

I'd rather do that than just go back and say we can't do anything.

Yes. Have we got a seconder for that

Motion? Yeah.

Will we look at it first?

Yeah.

I agree with the sentiment of it.

Yeah. Perfect.

Seconded, Councillor Richards. Thank you.

If nobody's got it— Yeah

Can I just ask a question to staff, and, you know, this is something that's not my forte. So do we actually have a number, or do we know roughly how many stormwater outlets there are that go into our creeks and tributaries and rivers, or is that just too hard to quantify

We'd have to make an inquiry of our assets team in terms of actual numbers. This report does detail the number of gross pollutant traps that we have and that we service there, but in terms of the total number of outlets, we'd have to get that from the assets. That's

Fine. I just wanted to check what is, just to put on the record now, what's Council's— what do we currently do to— what are the traps? Is it like I've seen on television, and excuse my nativity, but I think we need to learn and educate ourselves. Is it those big nets that we have that I've seen that catch everything, or what's the Hawkesbury doing? Or is the netting something that we may do in the future? I know that's going to come in the report, but just asking for now.

Who wants to answer that? Because usually gross pollutant traps aren't netting; they're big structures made out of concrete and grates, but —

Anyone? Who wants to— I mean, I could dig back into my memory

And draw one. Look, it's okay. I'd like to see that

In the report

Though, if those nets are something that are— because, and then if we do implement those nets where we don't have anything catching the big debris, how often they'd have to be changed and what sort of operational elements that would add to our staff.

They are like a trash basket.

Yeah, they are, yeah. So, and

They do require regular maintenance. But gross pollutant traps is kind of one avenue of litter collection. There are kind of potentially other things we could look

At. Yeah, if that could be included in the report, I'd like to see some information on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Richards. I think that with this issue, there's all sorts of rubbish as well, and there are—you can have built wetlands that treat stormwater, and that treats the nutrients and all of the other pollutants in the water, as well as gross pollutants. So there's a lot of things that council can be involved in, whether we have the resources to do that because it's really, it's, you know, those sorts of macrophyte beds, again, are really high maintenance. They work pretty well, but they're very high maintenance from my recollection. But I'd just like to add a few points as well. In— I think it was in the last committee, or it might have been in the wetlands working group workshop that we had, I think it was the University of Western Sydney, or Western Sydney University, was running a trial on fishing line bins at popular fishing spots along the Hawkesbury, and I thought that worked really well.

And the reports—I don't know whether Mr. Kearns can remember, can you remember the outcomes of that? But, like, for instance, what Councillor Connelly was saying, those sorts of things, although they're small, might have a very big impact. And I think we have to also be mindful that instead of having the notion that we try to contain all litter, it might be wise for us to find out what the most dangerous sort of pollution , gross pollution at least, goes to the ocean and try to either stop that particular whatever it is going into the ocean or make it valuable in some way. And I guess that's, whilst that seems like a kind of a bit of an out-there thought, I saw a program on the television not so long ago about how an artist in, I think it was Victoria, is using— The little plastic bread tags , thank you, little plastic bread tags, and making all sorts of really interesting artworks.

And of course, that means that they're then valuable. So I guess that's just that notion that we look at waste as being valuable. So , but anyway, getting back to what we're going to be asking staff to do, I think that's a good idea. I support that idea that we get a report of what we can actually do in the short term and what we're capable of doing, and we might be able to then move on to get funding and actually move forward. So, have we got those words up on the screen? Is everybody happy that that motion is clear? Okay. Is there any further debate?

Okay, so who's in favour? Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Richards, Councillor Kotlash. I declare it carried.

That is the end of our business paper and I don't think there's any further business, is there Mr. Pearce? No. Okay, I declare the meeting closed. Thank you.