Disaster and Emergency Committee Meeting - 27 September 2022

Good evening, and welcome to the Disaster and Emergency Committee meeting for the 27th of September 2022. My name is Sarah McMahon. I am the Mayor and Chairperson of tonight's committee meeting. Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. We pay respect to all Elders, past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first persons of the country. 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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For the benefit of those persons 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. Are there any apologies tonight? Declarations

Of interest. 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 declarations of interest.

Thank you. Committee meeting attendees who have not registered will be asked by the Chairperson at the end of 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 your submission, please remain available to permit the committee to ask questions. Now , before we begin, what I'd like to do is welcome our guests who have attended our committee meeting tonight. From the RFS, we have Hawkesbury Superintendent Karen Hodges, and she is online. From the New South Wales RFS, we have Jamie Carter, Manager Strategic Fire Trails, and Lawrence McCoy, Manager of Predictive Services.

From the Police, we have Local Superintendent Andrew Garner, and from the SES, Hawkesbury SES Unit Commander Kevin Jones. What I'd like to do before we begin is we, as you would have known, Councillors, we have received today a supplementary business paper, which has become item number four. I'd like to first of all move a procedural motion to move item number four to be the second item on the agenda, just to allow the RFS to present both items together. Move for that, Patrick? Councillor Conolly, sorry. Seconder, Councillor Reardon. All those in favour? Against? Carried. Thank you very much. Okay, section one, confirmation of minutes. As you can see, they are presented in the business paper.

Can I have a mover to accept the minutes? Councillor Reardon.

Seconder, Councillor Zemprogno.

All those in favour?

Against? Did you want me to read those? General Manager's gone. I call that carried unanimously.

Okay, so we open your business papers to item number one on page 13. I may now hand over to Hawkesbury Superintendent Karen Hodges to introduce this item.

Good evening, everybody. Can you all see me yet?

No. Yes, we can see and hear you. Oh,

Okay, cool. Thank you. Well, good evening, everybody, and thank you for the opportunity to be able to address you all tonight in relation to the Grosse Wollemi Strategic Fire Trial that we've been putting in, and also to brief everybody on the new Australian Fire Danger Rating. So what tonight we have, we've rostered along Jamie Carter, who is the acting manager of strategic hazard management. He's the project manager for the Grosse Wollemi Fire Trial Plan. So I might hand over to Jamie, and he can give an overview of the project for us. So Jamie, if you'd like to come online.

Thanks, Karen. Can everyone hear me?

Yes

Thank you. Excellent. So I don't want to take up too much time because I know there's a lot on, but I thought I'd just provide a bit of an overview of the program across the state in brief, and then talk more specifically about the work that's happening at Bilpin. So I'll just share my screen, and hopefully this works.

Put it on that one. Should be a big red blob on the screen for everyone to look at. Very offensive red in your face.

Yep.

Okay, excellent. Okay, so the Strategic Fire Trails Program is a fairly recent program for the RFS. We haven't traditionally had a huge role in fire trails across New South Wales. It's generally been the domain of the land managers. But the big driver for change was really in 2013. I think everyone may remember the Wambelong bushfire, which nearly took out the Coonabarabran Observatory. And the use and availability of fire trails was a very big issue that came out of the subsequent inquiry from that fire. As a result of that, there were some legislative changes that were made and came into force in July 2017. And what it gave the RFS the role of doing, or the responsibility for, was to set standards for what fire trails should look like, a process whereby fire trails could be designated, certified, and then registered so that they were made publicly known.

The ability or the requirement for the RFS to enter into private land agreements with private landowners, which is a significant issue, one of the big pieces of work up at Bilpin, to receive and manage complaints and notices, and the one that the council and the Carrens team have been involved in is the preparation of the fire access and fire trail plans, or the FAP plan, which needs to be done every five years. So that's the broad framework that got put in place post that inquiry and that fire. The network itself across the state, we break trails up into three categories: basically strategic, tactical, and track other. And the strategic ones are the ones that are really our key primary trails across the state for firefighting.

Tacticals are ones that we want to stay open, but not necessarily have them to the same standard as the strategics. And the track others are the ones that we want to know where they are, but we don't necessarily need them to remain open. The interesting part of this is that the strategic fire trails alone, there's over 30,000 kilometres of mapped strategic fire trails across New South Wales, which by way of comparison is 50% more than the entire road network that the RMS looks after across New South Wales as well. So the network that we're talking about here is a substantial network that takes a lot of work and there's a lot of complex issues involved in managing this and trying to get it upgraded with minimal amount of funding available.

Who owns that land? I guess the key breakup of tenure, Crown land have about 50% of those, 15% of those strategic fire trails, forestry about 19 to 20%, national parks about 38%. We think, because we don't have good tenure data on this, that if you break the rest up, that somewhere in there there's around about 6,100 kilometres of fire trails on private land. And that's a significant change for everybody because we now have this role of the private landholder having a say in fire trails and how they look and feel and where they go. And this is one of the big issues that we have to deal with as we implement the program. And that's very relevant to the Hawkesbury City Council area. I'm not going to read this, but the Independent Bushfire Inquiry after the 2019-20 season made some very serious or very strong recommendations with respect to fire trails.

And basically what they said was, okay, RFS, you've made a good start. You have a good framework for getting this in place, but there's some continuing issues. One is not enough work has been done. And if you read into the detail of the recommendations, one of the other things they talk about is the fact that the fire trail network is not built for fighting fires. So traditionally trails have been built... For land management purposes, not specifically for fire trails. So we've done a lot of work in the last 18 months to review our standards and the way the standards look, and to start to build fire trails far more focused on firefighting operations as opposed to just being an access way into the landscape.

At the moment, what have we got underway? There's about 107 trails underway. I do need to point out at this juncture, I guess it's important to note that national parks have their own funding and their own processes around fire trails. When this legislation change came in, they created their own processes around this and got their own funding from government with respect to upgrading the fire trail network. So the numbers that I've got here don't include the work that National Parks is also doing. But across RFS, councils, crown lands, forestry, et cetera, we've got, you know, about 35-odd million dollars' worth of work identified so far. We've spent about 10 million dollars last year. We have about 950 private lots involved.

And the other key part of this is one of the issues that we're all going to face, and it's going to take some different thinking from all of us, I think, is the significance of the amount of land owned by local Aboriginal land councils in the future. And we've got a very, very proactive and a very, very strong program of engaging with LALCs, as we recognise they have a significant proportion of land where fire trails lie. So we have strong relationships with LALCs and signed agreements with them to make sure that we get mutually beneficial results out of the fire trail program. So it's quite a large program. I'd point out that from our point of view, the RFS has one person in each of our seven areas across the state to implement this program, plus two of us in head office, which is a significant amount of work for the nine of us to do across the state.

I want to, or is there any— so that's it from a statewide perspective. Is there any questions regarding that overall program perspective that anyone would like to ask?

No, thank you. Please carry on.

No worries. Okay, so I want to show, some of you may have seen this, but I want to start off with a video which was made very early in the piece when we first started the Firetrail works up at Bilpin. So hopefully this works and the sound is okay and doesn't hurt anyone's ears.

It's generating .

We've got to get up ... We've got to get up ... The benefits of this project obviously, it's driven by the big fire events and our ability to backburn to the fire to contain it at that time. But it's in between that that I think the real benefit to our community is for our efficiency and the way we get our hazard reduction done and our ability to get them done when we want to do them will be much improved.

We won't be stuck making the trails do the hazard reduction each time it comes around. The other part

Of that is

Will make our community much more resilient when time does come. Stages we're in now, we're still in the early stages. The weather has been a bit of a problem at the moment, so we're trying to stay on the ground and get as much done as we can. Our primary reason for being here, access for the Category 1 fire tankers. What we're trying to achieve is traction and manoeuvrability so that they can come through in a fluid motion without any stopping. Installing gates, fixing drainage, make sure the ground's nice and hard for them to drive on.

We have a trail that goes through our property. With this project, it's important for the community because if you refuse it and they do a backburn right around the whole town and you leave a spot open in that firebreak, then the whole thing is a waste of time. And it's not about you or any individual property owner. It's about the community and what's best for the whole community. If

You live in an area like this and you're exposed to the forest and eventually a fire is going to come through, and if you've got a fire trail going through that's reasonably close to your house, which this is, why wouldn't you want it? All it's going to do is help save the day when the fire does come, because it means the fire trucks have got access to your property and can protect it.

I think for us, we're driven to protect ourselves, but the strategic line about [unclear] creates, that has the potential to protect an awful lot of people. Masons Ridge, Gross Area, East Carrajong, Carrajong, Currato Heights, Gross area, Mandy as far as Faulkner Reach, and obviously all the bush in between, stopping the fire this side of our town potentially stops it burning hundreds of thousands of hectares within the Gross Valley. This sort of concept of proper planning and investing in infrastructure between fires, this is the only way forward.

We'll

Watch it again, do we? And I think what would be really good, I think, is to acknowledge the work of Bilpin Bushfire Brigade, or Rural Fire Brigade, with this project. They've been true champions of this, and it's very much a community-driven project. So while there's a lot of support from RFS as an organisation, it's very much a community-driven project. And I think if anyone gets the chance to talk to members from Bilpin, I think passing on the community's thanks and recognising that the work that they've done is probably a really valid thing to do. So when it comes to private property, so just about all of that trail, except for some very tiny pieces, is on private land. So when it comes to fire trails on private land, there's all sorts of issues and things that crop up around this.

But very early in the piece, we made the decision that the RFS would take the bulk of responsibility for fire trails on private land. We'll fund the upgrade of the fire trails. We'll fund the maintenance of the fire trails. And the agreement that we have in place with private landholders is a very simple two-page, very, very plain English document. And really, that document basically says we as the RFS take responsibility for the upgrade and maintenance of the fire trail. All we ask you to do is to please not damage the fire trail, and if it is damaged in some way, please let us know. And I think the neat thing about this approach, and I think Ross alluded to it in the video there, is that this is an opportunity to really build a close partnership between brigades and the RFS as an organisation and landholders, which is something that probably has probably dwindled over the years in many respects.

And this is, in many ways, an opportunity to bring that back. That's a screenshot of the agreement. That's it. It's basically just two pages and basically says we'll do this, we'll take care of the funding, we'll take care of the maintenance. Please just let us know if there's anything wrong. The project itself, you can see here, there's 75-odd kilometres of fire trail here running to the north and the south from Berrambing and Mount Tomah all the way through to Kurrajong Heights. And included in that, which is not shown on the map, is Mountain Lagoon, which is a very important strategic fire trail to prevent fire running out of the Wollemi further east. And that will probably become stage three or four of this project.

So being so big, one of the things that we've had to do is to break this up into seven or eight stages now, with some tweaks, and funding this over several years and doing the work over several years. So what we've just about completed now, there's about a week left to go on stage one, which is around 11 and a half kilometres. That particular fire trail costs around about a million dollars to build across those 12 kilometres or 11 and a half kilometres. There's some very tricky trail building in there, and obviously the weather's played a role in. It's actually been quite helpful. Other than slowing it down, it's actually identified for us exactly where we need to focus a lot of the work so that the trail lasts.

And our view is that in this financial year, we'll fund and build most of stage two, which is the first element on the north side of the fire trail, of the Bells Line of Road. We had hoped for more funding this year, but we only received an additional $10 million this financial year, but we will be seeking more funding next financial year. And my view is that we could complete this whole project within five years, is the current plan. And that means that the fire trail network is in place by the time

Really the fuels are ready and that

Fire cycle comes around ready for the next potential fire event in the Wollemi or the Grose. So there's not too much else to say other than to have a look at some of the work that's going on. So this is some of the work that's been done around some of the properties. Up there in Bilpin, you can see that we're not building a road. We're really just reinforcing and armouring the areas where we need to do the work. Other than that, we're using existing driveways or access ways and giving them some strength, and just building them where we need to build them. And I think that photo on the left really demonstrates the value of this project. Before the 19-20 fire season, that just would have been bush.

That would have taken valuable resources, a fire truck, people, not only to identify where the trail needed to go, but to follow the earth-moving machinery around to keep it safe, costing many, many, many millions of dollars and taking resources off the fireground. And now that asset is here to stay. So I can safely say that on Monday, we took Bilpin's Category 1 appliance along what we've built in Stage 1 and it worked beautifully . A couple of little tweaks to make, but the brigade's very happy and we're very happy with the end result and how that's starting to take shape. So that's an overview of the Bilpin project. Karen, did you want to add anything, or are there any questions anyone has about that?

Thank you very much, Mr Carter. Superintendent Hodges, did you want to say anything before I pass the floor to councillors?

Oh no, I just wanted to reiterate what Jamie has said about the involvement of the Bilpin Brigade. They've done a tremendous amount of work, and they really should be congratulated and be very proud of the effort that they've put in. So yes, I'll just hand back to you.

Thank you very much. I'll put questions forward before we then put a recommendation. Questions? Yes, Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. This question may be more for Jamie, and the question is in two parts. Jamie, earlier this year, this Council was in a lather about the adoption of the Rural Boundary Clearing Code, and there were people who were, you know, protesting that the Rural Boundary Clearing Code did not mesh well with precisely the scheme that you have laid out for us tonight. So the first part is, I'd be fascinated to know, as our man on the ground, what you think of that question. And secondly, also being on the ground, whether there's any anecdotal evidence to hand about people employing the Rural Boundary Clearing Code and whether it's had any impact on fire hazard around particular properties.

And I ask that question because when we voted to adopt the Rural Boundary Clearing Code, we also voted not to take any data about its use. So I'm keen for any anecdotal account that comes my way.

Thanks, Councillor. Yep, I can speak to both of those issues. The apparent or the perceived conflict between the Boundary Clearing Code and the Fire Trails Program, I guess one of the things that I would say is that the Boundary Clearing Code is a code designed to help landholders manage fire on their property and to potentially reduce the movement of fire onto their property and to protect their boundary line. It's not an offensive firefighting tool. It's not something that lends itself to active firefighting as such. Because it allows for clearing, but what it doesn't allow for is the safe passage of an appliance, for example. So our fire trail standards talk about grade, crossfall, diameter of curves, clearance of vegetation, the ability for trucks to pass each other, and being an all-weather kind of surface.

Whereas the Rural Boundary Clearing Code really just provides a mechanical clearing along a boundary line, which, in my view, is a passive form of hazard management , which has some, undoubtedly under mild fire conditions, would have some positive impact. Whereas the fire trail itself provides a firefighting asset. I think of them as an operational asset, no different to, say, a fire station or a fire appliance. It's an asset that we use for active offensive firefighting and also hazard reduction work. So they're not really comparable. They play very, very different roles. But my view would be, you know, the more offensive firefighting asset sits with the fire trail. In terms of the anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of the boundary clearing code, look, I think it's reigned ever since across New South Wales heavily ever since the code came into existence, and I don't think there's really much evidence or anecdotal data out there about how much that code is being adopted and what impact it's having in terms of property protection.

I have no doubt, though, that there are plenty of properties across New South Wales where the ability to clear along their boundary will provide an effective passive form of hazard reduction, mechanical hazard reduction work. And I have no doubt that there will be stories where it's been effective in managing fire spread with the presence of an appliance or a landholder with suitable equipment at the same time as well. So, look, they're different beasts. I think it's too early to tell, and I think they each have their role.

Thank you. Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. A couple of questions. I'm not sure who's best placed to answer them. Are there any plans to do this work elsewhere in the LGA? We've heard from Colo Heights that they've got concerns about access to some of their fire trails and some areas up around the Colo Heights shed and the school, and also some anecdotal reports of difficulties on the Wommara fire trail that runs from Webbs Creek to Putty, and I'm sure there are others that we certainly are unaware of. Is this just those areas that have been listed for Bilpin and Mount Tomah at this stage, or are we looking at doing them somewhere else too?

Karen, I'm happy to take that if you like. Look, this is not just a Bilpin thing. You know, there's 30,000 kilometres of these trails across the landscape. Hawkesbury is very reliant on fire trails from a firefighting perspective, and they're all important. One of the things that the BFMC, the Bushfire Management Committee, really needs to take on, and I think what this whole change asks BFMCs to do is to be a lot more active in identifying which fire trails are really important, which ones are really useful, and which ones need attention and how they get prioritised. Like all of these things, you know, if I put my bean counting hat on, I feel like this across the state is around about an $ 800 million program, which of course we're never going to get that amount of money in the short term to deliver this program.

So we've got to make good decisions about which fire trails get funding. And I have no doubt that Colo Heights is another very exposed community which would be looking to get funding, at least to maintain the fire trails they have and then potentially further down the track with a view to upgrading them. And I think the Hawkesbury, which is so reliant on fire trails, is going to be somewhere where we spend a lot of time with this program.

Thanks, that's really useful. And actually, this presentation to the Disaster and Emergency Committee came out of me attending the Bushfire Management Committee, where we were shown the presentation. And I asked that it come to Council so that we could understand what was happening in the LGA. So thank you for discussing it with us, because I think it has been really helpful. Another question: what information have we given to the community so that they're aware of what's going on and their obligations in dealing with these trails?

So there hasn't been a big public campaign. The video that we saw was certainly shared on local social media outlets. The brigade is obviously, and the brigades are very aware of what's happening. One of the things for an individual landholder, though, one of the things that we do is engage as early as we can with the landholder. So you might imagine that— Some landholders would rightfully be quite nervous about the government organisation pushing a road through their backyard and wondering what that's going to look like and what that means. So we take a very heavy engagement process with this. And this is, again, where I think the local brigade up there deserves a real big thank you, is because they've done the large part of the engagement with the local community up there and sitting down with the cup of tea and explaining the program, what it looks like, what it means, and the fact that, you know, the ultimate outcome here is for us to be able to provide better protection for yourself and for the broader community and our firefighters.

And there's probably no hurdle on your property that we can't overcome one way or another, and just answering all of those questions. So we have, you know, a range of information, frequently asked questions and guidance packs and that sort of stuff for landholders as well. And I think one of the things that we do in some other parts of the state is actually community meetings. So actually, when we're talking about upgrading a particular fire trail, holding a community meeting to talk about the fire trail, the program itself, the obligations of us and the responsibility we're taking on, and what we ask of community members. And from that, it then goes to a more individualised style of engagement.

So I think for us, we want to be true to that concept of it being a partnership, and that means lots of conversation.

So has one of those community meetings been held in Bilpin so that other landowners, say adjacent landowners, are aware of what's going on?

No, not that I'm aware of. I think it's really been one-on-one, more style towards one-on-one engagement up there. And it seems to have, so far that seems to have worked. I think now that we've got some fire trail built, and people can kind of look at it, look and feel and see it, maybe something down the track is more community-based style of consultation would be appropriate. So it's definitely worth thinking about.

Thanks. Thanks, Councillor Wheeler. Councillor Lyons-Buckett on Zoom.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you for that wonderful presentation. I think that was really good. And thanks to the efforts of the RFS and the Bilpin Fire Brigade in getting that up and running, it's going to make a big difference, I can see. I just had a question about whether or not you'd had perhaps any resistance from any landowners, and how you would deal with that if somebody was not, you know, agreeable to having part of the trail on their land. I can't see why they wouldn't be, but if perhaps there was, is there an alternative? Would you take it back through some national park or something like that? Has that been an issue?

Look, it is everywhere. So absolutely across the state there's always some people who don't want to participate in the program and completely understand that. And I think, you know, we expected that as well. And I think the Bilpin project is a good example of this where, say, the thing is everyone on stage one and stage two so far has signed on the dotted line and said, yes, we want to be part of this. And I think that's really remarkable. But if there were one of those blocks where somebody didn't want to participate, it doesn't mean that the whole project or that the whole fire trail project is done with. We can actually build the fire trail up to either side of the property and get the maximum amount of fire trail in there as we possibly can.

Of course. What we have noticed in some other areas is where we've done that, when the neighbours or the people who didn't want to participate have actually seen what's happened and seen the end result, they've actually put their hand up and said, Hang on, we'd like to play now. Can we talk about this again? But look, everybody has a right to say no, and we completely understand that and completely appreciate it. And yes, we would look for alternative pathways if it was to go back into the national park or to find a crown corridor or an electricity easement or something like that. We'll always try and find an alternative. But if the worst case scenario is we essentially just build up to the boundary on either side, and if a fire event does occur

Then we

Deal with that in a different way. There's obviously a different set of powers around the ability to access land in the event of an emergency. And so, you know, we don't want to strong-arm anybody into anything or pressure anybody into anything. Again, it's about how do we do this in a partnering way.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr Carter. We appreciate your time this evening. Would anyone like to move a recommendation, please?

Councillor Conolly. Happy

To move the recommendation.

Do I have a seconder, please? Councillor Reardon. Councillor Conolly, do you wish to speak?

No, not at this point, no.

Thank you. Councillor Wheeler. Thanks. I note that recommendation two is to identify matters for further action or resolution by Council. Could I identify a couple of matters?

Firstly, that I think... We

Probably need to, and I think it's normally the mayor who attends the Bushfire Management Committee, that the mayor brings up the issue of the other fire trails in the LGA and the condition of those. Obviously, we're not in a position to discuss those at any length because that's not our area of expertise. But certainly the different RFS brigades will know that if we can at least be appraised of other areas where we could perhaps seek funding to extend this program or to assist with gaining funding for the RFS to improve those fire trails, because they do make an enormous difference to both the safety of the firefighters on the ground and also to property protection. And could we also perhaps suggest a public meeting for Bilpin?

There does seem to be a little bit of confusion about this issue, and I think some of it might be resolved by the public being better appraised about what's going on.

Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. Considering we're in a committee meeting and not quite a council meeting, I think we can all sort of be a bit flexible with our debate. Councillor Conolly, how did you feel about those additions to the motion?

Yeah, that's fine. I just want to clarify on that point too, whether the suggestion is that Council is suggesting to the RFS that they should be holding a public meeting, or is the suggestion that Council should be taking the lead in holding a public meeting?

I think it's an RFS matter. I don't think it's Council's place. Okay,

Yeah, as long as that's clear.

Did you want to come up with some exact wording so we can put that on the board?

Sure. That Council suggests to the RFS that a public meeting... Discussing the Bilpin Fire Trail and local and the community's

Responsibilities is probably too strong a word, but appraising the community of everyone's responsibilities with regard to the fire trail or something. I'm sure the RFS know what they need to tell the public, and I don't need to make that up.

Something there. Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. Did you want to, the first part that you mentioned though, when the Mayor attends the briefings, you wanted the Mayor to specifically mention to the RFS that they would like further information on other trails in the area. Is that what you were saying?

Fire trails that perhaps need additional funding and maintenance, and then we can use our advocacy to push for that. It sounds like it's a fairly expensive process.

You okay with that, Councillor Conolly?

Yeah. I'm just wondering, just on that second point, whether rather than us tell the RFS they should be having a public meeting, should we tell the RFS that we think that there's confusion in the Bilpin community about the program and that further engagement's required, for example, perhaps a public meeting, something like that, where we're not being so prescriptive that we've demanded a public meeting and not left it up to the RFS what they think is best.

I don't mind, but I think one of the things that we're going to see with this is that in some instances it's going to be council's compliance that's going to be dealing with any transgressions, and I think we do have a capacity to say to the RFS the community needs to be really well informed about how this is going to pan out because they have a responsibility to make sure this works too.

Are you happy with that, Councillor Conolly? Councillor Reardon. You've got those

Words that

I said. Yeah, we'll wait till we get those words up on the board, if that's okay, so that we can have some clarity there.

Yes, Madam Mayor, I'm happy with that. I understand the RFS will make alternate arrangements if people are not happy, so with the fire trail going through their properties, but often they do change their mind anyway, so they are flexible.

Thank you, Councillor. While we're getting those words up, was there any other councillors who'd like to contribute to the debate? Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was just wondering how the funding for this comes together. It sounds like this scheme has been funded to a certain extent. Were we looking at trying to secure funding via Council, or are we advocating for the state government to give RFS more funding? I'm not quite sure that I understand the funding, the structures of the funding. If somebody could just clarify that, that'd be good. I'll just,

To the General Manager, is that a question you think for Council or perhaps for RFS?

I would suggest it's firmly a matter for the RFS.

Councillor Kotlash, we could ask, because we are in a committee meeting and again being very flexible, perhaps if the Superintendent Hodges, did you want to respond to that question about the funding arrangements?

There is currently funding arrangements through the BFMC for all agencies, including Council, to make available to themselves. And Council are quite able to submit any funding requests for any fire trails that they have care and management of. I'd just like to point out too that each year in February of every year, all agencies, including Council, and all the brigades through the BFMC process are asked to submit any fire trail maintenance and upgrades that are required. So there is a review done of fire trails every year of management and, you know, support like we're talking about moving into Colo Heights eventually. So I just want to make it quite clear there are already procedures in place.

I heard mention before of around an APZ around the Colo Heights School, which was actually looked at today as a review to make sure the owners, I think it might be Council and Crown Lands, I'm not really sure off the top of my head, have maintained that trail. So there is work in the background that does go on to make sure that these trails are up to scratch. The mention of the Woomera Trail that is under the care of National Parks. I personally haven't been advised of any works that needs to be required to be done on that trail, but certainly welcome any feedback that anyone has. Jamie, do you have anything more to add with the funding arrangements at all?

Yeah, Karen. So everyone, the funding at the moment is through the RFS grants program. So we get allocated funding every year from the state government, which is available for grants for hazard reduction works, and that includes fire trail works, APZs, hazard reduction burning, that sort of stuff. So it's a bidding process, but by the same token, what we're trying to do with the fire trails is gather good data on the condition of fire trails and be a bit more planned than just random bids coming in. So I think it's something that what we should, the BFMC can, and it sounds like the BFMC is doing a good job of understanding the program as they need it to unroll over the next few years. And my job will be— Karen will hold me to account on this. My job will be to make sure that the right amount of funds flow to Hawkesbury to get the work done.

Sounds good. Thank you very much, Mr Carter. Is there any other councillors? Thank you, Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. Jamie or Karen, can we be provided with the map and the stages and when they've been proposed, of the total length, where it starts and finishes, and the proposed timeline of those? That'd be really, really keen.

Absolutely, no problems.

Thank you. Any other councillors?

No. Right of reply, Councillor Conolly.

No, I was going to quickly read the final motion.

Is 2A meant to say, Council provide feedback to the Bushfire Management Committee in regards to other trails that are required? Is that what we're trying to say? Yes, if we could say that.

Thank you. We'll just wait for that to be amended. And other than that

There's no right of reply.

Thank you, Councillor Conolly. We'll just wait for those words to be amended so that we know exactly what we're voting on.

Does he want me to repeat the words? Yeah I don't know. Council provide feedback to the Bushfire Management Committee in regards to any fire trails that we are aware of that require upgrade.

Isn't that the purpose of the Bushfire Management Committee?

It is.

Could I suggest, Madam Mayor, while we're waiting for the wording, that there will be a Bushfire Management Committee meeting around the end of October, early November, and whoever Council's representative would be would be able to provide that information. That's just a suggestion.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that, Superintendent Hodges. Okay, I think we've made those adjustments to the wording, just confirming with our mover and seconder that you're happy now with that. Yeah, okay. Without needing a right of reply, I'll put that to the vote. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Vaigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Calvert. Councillor Dogramachi is absent, sorry, I needed to record that on the apologies. We had a full chamber. We will need to record that on the apologies. Councillor Jirick, Councillor Lines-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, and Councillor Zanprogno. All those against? Councillor Kotlash. I declare it carried. Yeah.

Sorry, my apologies for Councillor Dogramachi there. It's just that his seat was occupied and it wasn't glaringly obvious, so we will record that in the minutes. Okay. As previously stated, we did move a procedural motion to push item number four, which was our late supplementary business paper, which you all would have received this afternoon, as the next item.

Superintendent Hodges, can you please confirm who's delivering that information?

I don't see Lawrence McCoy on mine yet. He was flying in to Sydney Airport at six o'clock, so can someone confirm that he's not online? If not, I might throw to Jamie involved in this process, and he's doing quite well so far, I think. Lawrence, you're not there, are you?

It doesn't look like it. Okay If Mr Carter is happy to proceed, we can still proceed. Otherwise, if you did want to wait for Mr McCoy, we could move it to the end, whatever you feel comfortable with. Jamie , you happy to

I'm happy to keep on going. Lovely.

Thank you, Mr Carter. Over to you.

All right. I've probably got this screen sharing down pat now, so where's the button gone?

Okay. Okay, the fire danger ratings, which are now new fire danger ratings, which are now in force. If I stumble over this, please forgive me. I guess one of the big questions is why. So why did the fire danger ratings need to change, or why were they seen to be a requirement to change? There's a couple of elements to that. One was that there was not a good level of uniformity across the country around fire danger ratings, and the Royal Commission into National Disaster Arrangements that came after the 19-20 season recommended that a more consistent, unified, or single form of fire danger ratings across the country was important. And the other point of this was that the science behind the old fire danger rating system came out of the 1950s and has really had very little in terms of development or change since those 1950s.

So we're kind of talking 60, 70 years of experience that hasn't been actually, and science and research that hasn't been put into the way the fire danger ratings had been done, particularly in New South Wales. And I think the interesting thing is the science we were relying on was a gentleman by the name of McArthur and a couple of his mates who wander around the bush at the back of Canberra and lit things on fire and measured flame height. And it was all, while it was all very good, it wasn't robust science. And we're now in a position where we have a huge amount of data and science and technology that can give us a much more informed and relevant fire danger rating system. One of the big things— The changes in fire danger ratings here is the way it interfaces with the community.

So a lot of research, a lot of community research went into this project. So it was one of the largest surveys actually ever conducted in Australia, and what it found was that most people knew about the fire danger ratings, and with a little bit of prompting, the numbers were extraordinarily high, about 93%. However, just about everybody, or half the respondents, believed that the ratings were a prediction of how likely a fire was to occur, not how severe a fire would be or what danger a fire represented to them should it occur. And there was very little consistent messaging about what actions a landholder or a resident should take at each of those fire danger rating levels. And there was definitely a sense within the community that unless it was on orange or red or black, you didn't really need to do anything.

And that's quite a troubling message because in the old system, there were a number of recorded deaths and a lot of very significant property damage recorded when the old fire danger rating system was in the very high range, which happens quite consistently. One of the really key things here is just the way that we're moving from six different fire danger ratings to four to simplify the messaging and simplify the work that needs to be done. It's actually four, but there is a nil start thing as well. So you can see on the slide there the new sign, which is in the middle. There's a white bar underneath moderate, and that is to be able to turn the fire danger rating system off. I feel like it's not a great message to the community as they drive over North Richmond Bridge or they get to North Richmond Bridge and they can't cross it because it's flood and pouring with rain, that the fire danger rating sign still tells them that there's a moderate fire danger and a chance that a bushfire might occur.

So this idea that let's be realistic and let's say that there are days and that there are times in our climate and in our weather system where fire danger really doesn't exist to any significant level, and that we can essentially turn the fire danger rating sign off. And the research also showed that that had a significant impact when the fire danger sign actually showed a level, then it was a noticeable difference, and people could actually notice something had happened and something had changed and that they may need to do something. So the signs themselves are much clearer and much more simple, and they have a community messaging element to them. So for each of those fire levels, those fire danger rating levels, there is a community action to go with it, and we'll go through those in a bit more detail in a minute.

But it actually starts to say, you know, you need to do this now. On this day, this is what you need to be doing. So while there's more information on the sign, it's actually more informative and it's simpler to digest the information as well. And a lot of work's gone into where the boundaries between the different fire danger ratings sit and the messaging that goes with each of those and what the optimum messaging would be.

And this is the key to this now, is very clear community messaging around the fire danger ratings. So at the moderate level, the key message is plan and prepare, and that is what would appear on a sign. And what the science would tell us is that at that level, most fires can be controlled, and that that's really a good idea for landholders to stay up to date and be ready to act if there is a fire. And you can see how this escalates during the different stages. It talks about this thing about fire behaviour, which is something we've not really talked about explicitly around this before. So from the most fires can be controlled, to fires can be dangerous, to fires will spread quickly and be extremely dangerous and catastrophic.

The data says that lives are likely to be lost at that level. So they're quite powerful messages that give people an indication about what kind of fire behaviour could be expected at those various levels, and also some information and some supporting messages about what to do and to prepare yourself in the event that fire danger rating is at those levels. And hopefully we can make this presentation obviously available to everyone. And I think it's worth actually just spending a little bit of time digesting some of this messaging that goes with this new regime , because it's important that we, I think, do work with the community in terms of making sure everyone's clear about it.

So what changed, I guess, is the really key thing here. The old fire danger rating system was based only on two vegetation types. It was basically based on bush , forest and grass, and that was it. And anyone who's been around Australia or New South Wales knows that we have some vastly different types of vegetation types across our landscape, and fire behaves differently in every one of those fuel types. In New South Wales, I think we look at having around about eight or nine different broad vegetation types for which we can actually have fire modelling specifically for that vegetation type, which gives us a really good insight into how fires will behave in those different pieces of vegetation.

And it will... It'll give much more specific information about how people can prepare, not just residents and landholders, but agencies, companies. For example, forestry are very interested in having a pine-specific model, which gives them their thresholds about when their levels of preparedness and readiness, et cetera, kick in to protect their softwood plantations. So the idea that we can actually track and monitor fire behaviour across the different vegetation types is really key to the new science that sits behind the AFDRS, Australian Fire Danger Rating System. And I think Lawrence might be online now, isn't he there, Lawrence?

Yeah, I am, Jamie.

You're doing a great job. You don't want to take over?

How did it feel like?

Well, how about I keep going and then you can add and fill in the gaps. Sure. So the different models really, as you can see by this demonstration here, give us just a really good indication and a really good scientific way of being able to understand fire behaviour in each of those different vegetation types. And where this gets really interesting is where you have, for example, a part of the landscape where you have a mix of vegetation types. And, you know, if you think about a coastal, an LGA that's got a coastal strip with a lot of heath along it, which then also gives way to some forest as you move further inland. And then there might be some pasture and some grasslands where some cropping might occur.

And all different types of vegetation giving us all different types of fire behaviour. And what this allows us to do is to model the danger and the risk in each of those fuel types. And then when we get more sophisticated, this to be able to be more targeted with messaging to different parts of the community about fire danger and the risk that's associated with it. As we implement this program.

How about I go

For it, mate? Go for it

From here, Jamie. I think Jamie's done a great job in explaining, I guess, the benefits of the AFDRS for community and also the science and underpinnings. So for those that don't know me, my name's Lawrence McCoy. I'm the Manager of Predictive Services, and I've been part of the team that has been implementing the Australian Fire Danger Rating System for New South Wales. And so if we move forward in the implementation slides, we can get a little bit of insight into how that implementation has been rolled out. And so there has been significant change for us, not only as fire managers and not only for the Rural Fire Service, but all firefighting agencies around the nation.

And

There's also change for people who also use the fire danger rating system. But part of our rollout that's happened prior to the 1st of September and after 1st September has focused on the design and installation of the fire danger rating signs . We've had an extensive public education and awareness campaign, and there's been adaptation of the new AFDRS to all of our information that we share with the community. And we've been working with our agency partners and providing updates, and there's been a huge amount of work for us in updating our systems and our training and our policy and procedures. And I guess for the community, we launched the Get Ready weekend earlier on this month. And I guess there's been a range of interim measures put in place, and the most visible of those is the fire danger rating signs, where we've replaced all of the manual signs around the state.

We've actually overachieved. We planned to replace 560, and I think there's been around 590 replaced, and we're still finding more. So if there are signs out there, particularly in the Hawkesbury LGA, please let us know if they haven't already been replaced. We are working on a longer-term strategy at the moment for the electronic signs, and you may have noticed for areas with electronic signs, we have implemented an interim procedure where we've got these VMS trailers in place.

So if we move on to the next slide,

There's been a national marketing campaign, or national campaign release, and there are some TV commercials, and we've had radio announcements and our traditional media and also social media releases of the AFDRS. We move on to the next slide. Can we have an example of this?

Stuck. You're

Stuck. All right. Hopefully if you click on this, Jamie, our television commercial will play. No. If you go back, maybe you hit the down arrow.

No, that's not going to play. That's a shame. All right. So there is... I will say this much about the television commercial. Yeah , that's okay. Hopefully people will have seen this. If they haven't, it's actually got firefighters from the Rural Fire Service, so it's authentic. And

Here we go. So it's going to work. Would you like me to play? Why not?

So we've used our knowledge to change the fire danger rating system. It's now simpler, clearer, and it could save your life. Each level shows how dangerous bushfire could be and comes with clear actions to take.

The new fire danger rating system. Know the changes. They could save your life.

Thanks, Jamie. Apologies if that was a little bit fragmented . Might be the line speed there. All right. So... In applying this new system, there's obviously some significant changes, as I mentioned before, but changes for organisations like Hawkesbury Council to consider are policies such as the open burning policies, and maybe there's some conditions around that relating to fire danger ratings, community information that goes on the web and the information that is provided to the general public, such as your brochures and pamphlets and so forth. But there may be some considerations that need to be made around internal documents for councils, such as what we call operational readiness triggers, or when you might be using facilities, or when you might be closing those facilities, when you might be staffing those facilities, for example.

And then, you know, obviously those operational arrangements that might be associated with increases to fire danger.

Okay, might move on to the next slide.

So under this new system, traditionally, or if we talk about the old system, total fire bans typically came into effect at a fire danger rating of 50. They will, well, a fire danger index of 50, or when the fire danger rating reached severe. Under the new system, total fire bans will typically be applied at extreme or above, which, although the name for that fire danger rating category changes, for all intents and purposes, the fire behaviour that you would expect associated with that fire danger rating category doesn't change. Typically, when fire permits are suspended, will be aligned with the high fire danger rating category. And again, although that name change, it appears as though we're reducing the threshold by when permits would be typically suspended, the fire behaviour that you would expect in that new high category aligns with the old very high in the old system.

So in effect, all that really changes there is the name. Probably not as relevant for Hawkesbury as the harbour safety alerts. All right, might move on to the next slide. I've spoken a bit about the fire danger rating signs. I'm not sure if we need to say too much more about that, but as I said, the longer-term electronic sign strategy is underway or being developed at the moment.

All right, move on to the key points here. We've got this new system. It's kicked off, and we've got through the initial phase of rollout of the Australian Fire Danger Rating System in New South Wales. Now we're moving into the next phase where we're embedding the changes, and we're moving from those non-critical changes that needed to happen prior to the 1st of September onto the changes that we could take a little bit more time to implement. So it's going to take some time to fully embed this system. There may be changes required for Hawkesbury Council to the policy and procedures if they haven't already happened. And there are opportunities to consider the AFDRS in the future for, I guess, broader bushfire risk planning considerations, like building in bushfire prone areas or like some of our other programs like neighbourhood safer places.

But for the moment, those land use planning changes will remain with the old system. But there is some links there where we can find out some more information or to contact if you'd like more information. And we'll move on to the next slide, which is what's next for us. So I

Think, well, it's actually what's next for everybody. We need to make sure that our signage reflects the new system. Documentation needs to be upgraded if it hasn't been already. And we need to continue that communication with the community, but also with our people that are implementing this system. And so we can provide you with some of that information to support and update policies and procedures. And I will nominate volunteer our local fire control officer there, Karen Hodges, to help out with some of that adjustment. But certainly from a headquarters level, we can provide support as well. And there is a wealth of information that can be promulgated through council traditional forms of communication that council have. I’ll leave it at that. Apologies for being late, and happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much, Mr. McCoy. And as the Mayor just would like to formally welcome you to joining us tonight, thank you very much, and thank you to Mr. Carter for beginning that presentation. I’ll just ask councillors if there’s any questions. Councillor Conolly. I just

Had a question, probably for the General Manager. Will Council receive a briefing on any changes required to our policies and procedures, or a report?

I think, Council, we just need to take it on board, and absolutely if there are changes required, we will absolutely brief you on those.

Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was just wondering what the scale of the signs that is when you’re out and about in the Hawkesbury. I mean, Hawkesbury is a huge place, and I often wonder when I cross the bridge at Richmond, when I see that warning sign, does that apply to the whole LGA, or how is that implemented? The reason I ask is that on our Council web page, we have an emergency dashboard. So presumably anybody in the Hawkesbury can go onto that and find out what their fire rating is. So is it brigade? Is it the scale of the brigades, or is it the whole LGA?

Look, I can answer that question. Fire danger ratings are calculated on fire weather areas, and those fire weather areas are much larger than local government areas. Under this new system, we do have more information available to help us with local decisions for our fire danger ratings. But broadly speaking, those fire danger rating signs reflect the fire danger rating for the Greater Sydney fire weather area. Now, as far as how people would get information on their fire danger rating, those fire danger rating signs are just one part of the suite of tools we have to communicate fire danger ratings to the community, and they’re very visible because people drive past them. But traditionally, people more and more, I think, will find this information through websites, through their apps, the Fires Near Me app, the Rural Fire Service website.

For example, and perhaps Karen, is there any further you'd like to add to contextualise that?

Lawrence, you're doing fine. Yeah. Okay,

Thank you very much. Any further questions, councillors? No. Thank you very much, Mr McQuay. We appreciate your time there. Do I have anybody willing to move the recommendation? Thank you, Councillor Conolly, seconder? Councillor Veigel.

Would you like to add anything, Councillor Conolly?

No, I think that's probably... I would, the recommendation, I would just be moving point one rather than point two. It doesn't seem like there's anything for council to identify immediately, and the general manager has indicated that we'll be told if we need to change something.

Are you happy with just point one, Councillor Veigel? Thank you. Any further councillors wish to speak?

No. Right of reply? Thank you. Okay, all those in favour, please raise your hands. In favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert absent is Councillor Dogramachi , Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Bucket, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Sempragno and Councillor McMahon. I declare that carried.

I might just ask thank you to the RFS members who have joined us. You're very welcome to stay, or you are very welcome to leave the Zoom meeting if you like for the remainder of items. It's completely up to you, just letting you know. But thank you very much for attending and for your time tonight.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you. Okay, moving on to item number two, SES Australian warning system, and to present this item tonight, we have Hawkesbury SES Unit Commander Kevin Jones. Over to you.

Thank you. I'll just wait for the presentation to come up. While we're waiting, just thank you to Jamie and Lawrence because a lot of the things that are in the fire danger rating system is the same sort of background as for the reason why SES has gone to a new warning system. So the number of products that we send out after the bureau issues flood warnings is mind-boggling. It takes a lot of mental power to unravel all of the different products, flood warnings and, sorry, flood bulletins and evacuation warnings and evacuation orders that get issued by SES during a flood event. And I'm sure all of you had mailboxes full of different products that really, it's—this is a whole new project which is going to simplify it right down to those, surprisingly, the same colours that RFS used in there are using in there. Their products as well.

So the background of the actual warning system and there's a new app, which are the three things that I'll talk about very quickly.

So the SES has a responsibility. I'm probably telling everybody stuff they already know about SES, that we have a responsibility under the SES Act to establish flood warning systems to coordinate evacuation and welfare of affected communities and to protect people from dangers and also to disseminate the information that relates to floods.

So the important thing with this is that none of the products that have come from the Bureau of Meteorology are going to change. They're still going to do their flood watches and their flood warnings. So those two products don't change. And what SES has always done is taken the information that's contained in the flood watches and flood warnings, which is really just a predicted height at a predicted time at a location. And so what we have done up to now and will continue to do is to look at all the flood intelligence that we have and then issue the different products in the Australian warning system to indicate what the actual effects of that is. So it's very the whole system of taking the Bureau's information and then adding all the flesh around the bones to that to let people know exactly what's going to happen.

So this is a bit of an example of what I was talking about, the plethora of different products that used to be sent out or do until two days' time. These are all the current warning products that we would send out normally during a flood.

So, similar to what the background that Jamie and Lawrence talked about is that there's a national framework being endorsed by the Australian New Zealand Emergency Management Committee, and they have done a whole lot of social research, and it was actually the third largest social research study conducted with over 20,000 participants to come up with the design and the colours and all that sort of thing.

And it was a part of a recommendation that was in a 2020 Royal Commission to implement a warning system.

So our public launch is in late September. It's actually the 30th of September is when it's going to be made public. Up till now, SES has been doing a lot of education of all of the users of the system, which is us, as in the people in the incident control centres down to local units like ours, to know how the system is going to work and what it all means. The benefits is the greater consistency. So every state in the nation is going to adopt the same system. New South Wales is the first. To do it. Likewise with the RFS, they're the first ones to adopt it, but the other states are coming in the near future. Some of them will be up to a couple of years away, but eventually in the next few years, every state will be the same, so we'll have a national system. And it goes without saying, the whole premise on this is to try and empower communities to make safe decisions.

So the AWS , the system is, this is the symbology that's going to be used in increasing consequences to communities. So it starts with the low-level yellow symbol, which is basically low-level flooding, or the flood threat is easing. So the way that the system will work is that it will scale up and then scale down again as the water rises and falls. So the low-level flooding stuff could also mean that the floods, the threat's eased, but there still some hazards exist in that scenario. And then as we go up to the orange, which is, you know, major things being impacted, roads being cut, priming people that they may need to evacuate or going to be isolated. And then the basically emergency alert level at red is over for flooding, the evacuations, isolations, major roads, and so on.

So yellow, the advice. Status or warning. These are very similar to what we've seen from RFS in the past as well. So adopting the same yellow colour that's in the lowest level of the fire danger ratings. So really telling people to stay informed, to monitor conditions, or that the threat's reducing and people, for example, can return with caution, which is a new thing that's been happening in recent times to try and expedite people getting back to their homes, getting back to their properties and businesses and being able to start their clean up and do what they can, even though there's still some hazards in the flood area. So that's the advice level. And they sort of run parallel, the flood watch and the minor flood bulletin stuff that were happening up till now, the minor flood bulletins, and they'll be replaced with an advice that describes what the effect of the flood watch is going to be.

So then the orange level, the watch and act, so prepare to evacuate, prepare to isolate, depending on the location, there are evacuation routes and so on. Some communities, like lots of the areas in the Macdonald Valley and the Colo Valley, will be isolated rather than be able to evacuate. And then lots of the other areas, more populated areas, our action of choice is to evacuate them, even though recent research has told us that not very many people do. And also to let people know who are travelling and so on to avoid the area because, you know, there's going to be floodwater, and we don't want people driving into floodwater and so on. So, and these will go hand in hand with things like the major flood warnings, minor flood warnings and so on, depending, moderate flood warnings, depending on where they are.

And it sort of replaces things like the moderate flood bulletin that SES would put out, the major flood bulletins, and also evacuation warnings. They'll come out as a watch and act and prepare to evacuate,

Or evacuate. And then the emergency warning level, the red one, is evacuate before a certain time, or evacuate now, or shelter now. So shelter now goes with the people who are going to be isolated. They need to either shelter or move to higher ground. And this will basically replace what we've previously called an evacuation order in the old products.

So I've

Told a lie. ACT and Tasmania have already adopted this in mid to late 2022, so I'm assuming they've already done it, or if not, they're very close. But the first step for SES is the riverine flood stuff, which are the symbols on the left there. And then SES has a responsibility for warning people about tsunami as well, and so the symbology is slightly different with the wave in there, but the colour scheme is the same. In 2023, they're going to develop another lot of products for flash flooding with the same sort of symbology as flooding. And then also storms will follow as well, so severe thunderstorms.

So in the products that we bring out, there'll be these elements. So it'll talk about the location and the hazard. So the type of hazard, for example, you know, the flooding in Lismore, types of hazard impacting the community and the location. So in our area would be things like, you know, Richmond lowlands will be inundated.

And

Then an action statement will say something like, to guide the community. And, you know, an example of that, it says there is to stay informed. So now we get a flood watch, we can issue a thing saying there's a chance of low-lying areas being inundated, and the action statement is for people to stay informed, watch all the information that's coming out, keep an eye on the river if you've got pumps and so on and so on. So action statement. And then the warning level, which will be one of those three warning levels that we've shown there before.

The good thing is that all of this is very customisable to very small locations, right down to the subsectors that we've created. There's hundreds of them in the LGA, and there could be a product for each of those, which is sort of a bit counterintuitive when it comes to getting rid of all those other products. But all those other products we were looking at there before, you possibly could get one of each of those for each location. So this is hopefully going to reduce the number of those things that we see and make it much clearer and easier for people to understand what's going to happen and what they need to do.

So these are just some examples of. The top level one there is in a sector which would normally evacuate rather than isolate in place, and they would start out as a watch and act, and the statement in there would be telling them to prepare to evacuate. And then there's the emergency warning level, which would be evacuate now. It could go from watch and act, then escalate to emergency warning, and it could either be evacuate or move to higher ground if it's on a flood island or somewhere that people are going to isolate. And then it would revert back down to watch and act as the water recedes, and then back down to advice, which is saying that people can return with caution.

So this pretty map, it's a shame it's not of the Hawkesbury. There'd be about 300 of those little triangles everywhere. But the whole thing is that in a lot of areas, not in the Hawkesbury, but a lot of areas, they've been doing very broad warning products and bulletins that are basically based on riverine systems rather than getting down to locations. And they really need to be location by location because the situation at somewhere like Richmond Lowlands is very different to somewhere like McGraths Hill or the McDonald Valley or the Colo Valley. They're all very different, so they need individualised products, and they will be

This is just an example of what the products might look like. Including a QR code which will take the reader if they, if they've got a device like a mobile phone with them, a smartphone, they can scan a QR code and it takes them to a... The new product that's going to be launched later in the year called Hazard Watch, which is quite exciting. I like the idea of this. It's something that's really good that's going to come out of this. And all of this layout and the design of it is all a result of research from the Queensland University of Technology to make sure that it can be understood and it leads to action. I'm not quite sure how they can get inside the people's heads to make them act and think the right way, but this is a better way to lay it out and tell people about what's happening.

So, similar to the RFS stuff, the icon messaging. The

Icons and messaging is going to be nationally consistent. Warning areas are going to be very flexible and we'll be able to issue those down to subsectors if we want to in the new world. And the warnings are uploaded to Hazard Watch, which is a new publishing platform and displayed on the SSS website and the Hazard Watch app.

If you want to have a preview of what it looks like, you can actually go on a computer but not on a mobile device yet and go to hazardwatch.com, and it shows you a bit of an example. There's actually some live stuff in there. It shows a bit of an example of what it's going to look like. And then the publishing of it, there's lots of different additional channels for publishing, and warnings will also be published to the Hazard Watch platform

At hazardwatch.gov .au.

And you'll notice that it doesn't say .nsw.gov.au, and that's because it is going to be a national system, and Hazard Watch will cover every flood in the whole of Australia. If you want to be a sticky beak and set your alerts to tell you about every flood in Australia, you can.

So, repeating myself, consistency and clarity in action statements, alignment and clarity for cross-border communities, which is really good. There were a lot of different things happening in cross-border, not that that affects us here. Warnings are based per community with increased localised information and new streamlined processes for publishing warnings, saving time and resources in IMTs. Interestingly, up till now, in our world at Hawkesbury, we had no visibility of what the products were that were coming out, and prior to the floods in 2020, I had black hair because I got turned grey worrying about when the products were going to come out, knowing full well that evacuation routes are very quickly disappearing.

And so I spent a lot of time pestering the hierarchy in SES to issue the products that we needed to go and distribute to the community. So the good thing is now that we will have visibility of all the draft products and know what's coming, and we'll have even more ammunition to get the big stick out and tell the hierarchy we really need those products. Otherwise we're going to go on free range and tell people our own thing, which they don't really like us to do. So

And this nicely fits in with some of the stuff that came out in all the... The flood reviews and stuff post Lismore. The interesting thing is this is one of the things that are in the recommendations, and this was already in train. It was already happening. You already knew that this was coming before any of those things happened.

So, a little bit more about the HazardWatch app that's coming. It's going to be released later this year, or early next year, I can't remember. It probably says in the next slide. But the SES divides the floodplain up into sectors, and the sectors have subsectors. And if you want to, you can zoom in on your property, and it will show you the subsector that will have a warning issued to it when that subsector is going to be subjected to either isolation or inundation, or that it's likely that it will, and so you will be able to set your device to send you alerts as soon as there's any product issued for that location right down to very small areas in the Hawkesbury LGA, because there are some subsectors that are quite small, but they have specific needs because their evacuation gets cut earlier than other areas very close to them, or they need to isolate, or so on.

So, to me, this is a pretty exciting thing that enables people once again to get better information, because a lot of the complaints that we hear all the time is the overspray that they get when they issue emergency alerts via text message, because it's very hard to pinpoint that right down to the actual affected community that needs to get that warning, whereas this lets you go down to, it completely matches the subsectors that all the SES is working on in all the different areas. So that, to me, is a huge benefit of this when that comes, which is in the next few months.

So SES has started to do a bit of stuff with community engagement. I was part of a presentation we did at Wiseman's Ferry on Sunday to let the community down there know about the Australian Warning System. And there's also other events and things planned. Our commissioner's coming out here on Thursday to launch storm season plus the Australian Warning System down near Windsor Bridge, which I believe Mayor is going to attend, and I

Need

To tell you some important information about that afterwards as well. The time's changed slightly.

And the SES is also producing, or has produced, a whole lot of different material. I think maybe one document got emailed to all the councillors. Did that happen, or was it just the

EOC? I can't remember.

But there's a whole lot of this other information and stuff which is coming out. It's already been put onto social media platforms and stuff, and the SES website as well to let people know the changes are coming.

And that's it from me. Any questions? Happy to try and answer them for you.

Thank you so much, Mr Jones. Is there any questions from councillors? Councillor Calvert.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thanks, Mr Jones. Just a question probably for the staff. Does our emergency dashboard automatically import all this information, and what relationship do we have with the SES regarding that information?

General Manager.

That's a good question, Deputy Mayor. And my instinct is going to tell me that no, it's probably not an automated integration, and that we've probably got some staff behind the scenes that will need to probably... The HazardWatch piece will be really exciting for us because we'll then be able to provide a direct link back through to the HazardWatch website. So I suspect in the meantime, it's probably more of a manual integration.

Would it be an idea that we have a conversation with the SES to see how we can make that an automatic link?

I'm not even sure that it needs—it'll need a conversation. As soon as hazard watch goes live, we'll be able to cross-reference that back out. I'm pretty confident about that, Councillor, but definitely . Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Any further questions? Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, and thanks, Mr. Jones. I don't recall you having

Black hair prior to 2020, but we'll let that go on the public record.

I think I've got significantly more greys too, don't worry. I think Council probably needs to discuss how we can help get this information out to the public, whether we use the rates notice for both this and for the RFS new warning system and Council's Facebook page as well. I think we can certainly help spread some of that information around. Just a couple of questions. The isolate, or the instructions to isolate, how big is that isolation area? We're talking about something the scale of Greno Point, or are we talking about the scale of something like west of the river? You know, is that technically an isolation, or is that, you know, you can't go your normal way?

Technically, it can be whatever we want, but realistically it's going to be down to those smaller areas because we're trying to make the information more specific to the communities. Because Greno Point is very different to somewhere like Wilberforce, because Wilberforce people can move away from the flood water as it rises, whereas Greno Point is isolated, and so they need very different products. And that's the whole idea of it, is we can get right down to those sub-sectors I was talking about. That allows us to really tailor it to suit the actual area that's subject to the product that's coming out.

Thanks. And how do we ensure that people get the product that's most relevant to them? So I got warnings for Pitt Town, for example. I'm on the other side of the river.

So the hazard watch app and the website is very similar to what Fires Near Me does now. And so that will help if people are tech savvy enough to have the app and be able to set up alerts and things like that. After that, the products that are issued and all that, SES does the same. We will still do the same thing where all of those things will be published on Facebook pages and websites, plus our last line of defence is to physically go and deliver those products to door to door. So that won't change. We'll still be door knocking and issuing all of the products as they come out if we think that it needs that. And definitely when the action statement says you need to prepare to evacuate or evacuate, then those things will definitely be hand delivered door knock to all the areas that we have time to, depending on the rate of rise.

If we get alarming rates of rise like one and a half metres an hour that we had in the last flood, then time beats us sometimes with that. But yeah, some of the stuff that we've always done will continue to happen, like the door knocking and that, which is our last layer to ensure that we find people that don't have all the technology to keep up with that. And we do discover people like that all the time when we do the door knocks.

Yeah, I think that's a really important point. We do know that there are people, and then of course there's the people whose technology fails them because they don't have the infrastructure to keep that technology active. And I assume then that the language that's used, for example, on the ABC radio, which is often people's backup if their phone isn't working, will change as well. So that would be much more action oriented.

That's correct. The products that the flood bulletins that we were sending out will no longer exist, and they'll get a product which says, you know, prepare to evacuate, evacuate. In the same format that we saw there. So they'll see the same products with the same symbols and the same wording that's in the new system, and that's what they'll be using.

Great. It certainly sounds like a much better—they were really wordy, I think, those previous warnings. There was a lot of words and not much telling you what to do to get prepared, which then led everybody to buy up all the toilet paper, for what it was worth. What happens with the—final question—what happens with the flood height predictions then? Do they come out in any of the warnings? I know we've got residents who are now quite practised at flooding and really good at knowing when they have to take particular actions. Where will that information come in?

So my understanding is some of that will be in the new products, but the products that come from the bureau as well, all their flood warnings, which contain what time, at what location, the heights are going to be achieved. So they'll still remain the bureau products stay, and that information's in all the bureau products. And then what we do with that is go, right, if it's going to reach 14 metres at Windsor, then these are the effects that will happen, and if you live in these areas, then you need to evacuate.

And will those height predictions be in HazardWatch, or will people need to toggle between?

I believe they're going to be in the products. I'll find out for you.

Thank you. Thank you. Any further questions, Councillor Sheather? Yes.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Kevin, those brochures that have gone out, I think all they've done to the SES has been commendable. I think people look at that information. I don't know how much they take in, but I think they look at it with the confidence that the SES is very professional in what they do. With the new app, will the community alerts still go out as well, or will there be some massaging in that regard?

I believe emergency alerts are still going to get used. I don't know that specific question, but I'm sure it is. I believe it is, and I can confirm that for you.

Right. Yeah, I just thought there might have been a little bit of confusion between if they're both used at the same time.

I'll find out because I think it shouldn't, but I don't know if that's what's going to happen.

The other thing, with some of the media releases and that, does the SES have some of the frustration in relation to riverine flooding and local flooding?

Sorry. Does the SES have frustration in relation to requests and stuff where there's riverine flooding and you've got areas like Carrajong that might have a big storm there, with the media all of a sudden Carrajong's flooded for five minutes, as it would be?

It's a bit frustrating that the news cycle, frustratingly for SES, takes over sometimes and a lot of the messaging that we'd really like to get out gets lost in other stuff. And likewise, they go for something which is more interesting or more sensational, so a lot of the messaging does get lost in that way sometimes.

Just one last question, Madam Mayor. In relation to the equipment that you have, are we running short?

That's a very good question. We in the Hawkesbury, we're very lucky. We have a very good level of equipment, and something to note is that in some of the messaging that we've heard recently, they talked about high clearance vehicles. That have been introduced into SES, and we actually have possession of one at our headquarters that's based here. So that's another added thing that will enhance our capability. We do have a very large fleet of boats and all different types of craft that are suited to the area that we work in.

And

Our biggest challenge now is getting the people to put bums on seats, so to speak. The COVID epidemic has really stopped us from training and creating new operators in the last two and a half years, so we've really suffered. And then these things called floods come along and interrupt that as well. And so we've had a bit of a hiatus with getting new people in and creating new members. But one of the good things that's come out of all the flooding is that we've had a huge influx of people wanting to join SES, community members that want to get involved, which is great. And so we're slowly but surely working through all the applications and getting people in and starting to train them. So we'll never have enough resources, to answer your question.

On a bad day, we'll not have enough resources, but we do have the resources of the whole of New South Wales SES if we don't have flooding on the north and south coast at the same time. But in the event that we're left to fend for ourselves, we are very well resourced, but we'll never have enough gear, and there's a limit to how much you can have and where you can store it.

Our headquarters

Is not big enough anymore because of the amount of resources that we've got jammed in there now. We're looking at talking to State Headquarters and others about what we can do about that.

Thank you very much. No further questions. Thank you so much for your time and all of your responses, Mr Jones. Can I have a mover for the recommendation, please? Councillor Sheather, seconder? Councillor Conolly. Councillor Sheather, would you like to say anything?

Any other councillors wish to speak? Councillor Conolly.

Only to say I think that we should do the same thing we did for the last matter and take out point two in that again. There's actually nothing for councillors to do from this, I don't think.

Are you happy with that, Mr Sheather?

Any further discussion? Councillor Wheeler. I think there were a couple of— certainly there's one thing for us to do, and that's to see how we can facilitate getting this information out, perhaps through rates notices and through council's Facebook page. So if that could be identified, then I think that would be useful. And again, I think there's potential for looking at council's policies as to how we need to react to the change.

Did you want to add that as a point two, or if you have the approval of the mover and seconder?

I guess we need to ask the staff about the— is that difficult or financially a constraint to add that to a rates notice mail-out?

I'd have to take on notice the cost associated with publishing the documents out through the rates notices. Certainly we have, and we will continue to promote the changes through our Facebook page and through our online platforms.

Are you happy to take that on notice, pending advice? Thank you,

Councillor Wheeler. Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just on putting things out in the rate notice, I think that it's probably better that we promote the SES through the normal channels that we do, the Facebook page. I think if it goes out in the rate notice, we're starting to possibly confuse the community about— The point of truth, which I think has to remain with the SES. So I'd caution putting things out in the rate notice. I think we have to do all of the promotion that we do normally, which is, you

Know,

Got SES liaisons on the front pages of things. But I think we have to be mindful of that point of truth, the less confusion that is in the community about who does what and where it comes from, I think we have to be mindful of that. But I'm happy to promote where it's appropriate.

Thank you, Councillor. Any other councillors wish to speak? No. Right of reply? Not necessary, Councillor Sheather. Okay. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Dogramaci is absent, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, and Councillor Wheeler. I declare the motion carried.

Okay, moving on to item number three, various floodplain management matters. I was advised that Mr. Andrew Kearns was going to deliver some commentary on this. Is that correct?

Yes, I can do, yep. Lovely,

Thank you, Mr

Kearns. So just highlighting this report's sort of borne out by the Council resolution from June of this year, just calling on various updates on various matters and just sort of gradually sort of stepping through those various matters. There was the flood study work, and that's sort of highlighting the work that Infrastructure New South Wales had undertaken in releasing the Hawkesbury-Nepean Regional Flood Study in 2019, and we've provided the link to that study. So that's the best available information and data in terms of flooding on a regional basis. Infrastructure New South Wales, I guess also as part of the Resilient Valley, Resilient Communities strategy , is also undertaking a 2D flood study of the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley.

Now that had been scheduled to be released by now, but obviously with the additional flooding that the valley's experienced, they're just sort of modelling the, I guess particularly the March and July floods to include as part of that particular To remodel , and so we're expecting that to be released in early next year. Various river height gauges. So Council's made a number of representations in terms of the need for river height gauges at South Creek in particular. I guess that's sort of highlighting that there's a significant distance between where the closest gauge to the Hawkesbury is currently in South Creek is close to the M4. And also in terms of Yarramundi, there's obviously been issues with the Yarramundi gauge.

So obviously those representations have been made. There is good news in respect to a number of these gauges, and we've highlighted there that the river gauge at Yarramundi is to be updated as part of a program of works, and there's also the river height gauge at St Albans to cover the Macdonald River, and also a new river height gauge to be installed at Colo Bridge on the Putty Road. So that's good news that those gauges are actually being upgraded and installed. Also called for sort of updates on various outstanding issues from the previous floodplain risk management committee, and that's sort of listed there. A lot of these are obviously detailed further in terms of this particular report.

Power supply during flooding, and obviously power supply west of the river, so that has been an issue that the Council has had concerns with for some time. There was obviously a presentation from Endeavour Energy to the former Infrastructure Committee in 2018, and we've included a copy of that presentation as part of this report. And I guess since that time, we've obviously seen the adoption of Council's net zero emissions and water efficiency strategy, where we have one of our key strategies is a more resilient and renewable powered grid. So we've already been working with Endeavour Energy to sort of explore options that, you know, opportunities there to get resilience in that grid. Also highlighting that we had applied through the New South Wales Floodplain Management Grants Program for a number of grants, and one of those was to look at the secondary impacts and resilience planning in the Hawkesbury LGA, and I guess, you know, particularly looking at that issue in terms of not only power supply, but issues in terms of sewer, water as well.

A lot of those secondary impacts, areas that aren't necessarily directly impacted by flooding are obviously impacted by loss of those particular services. So also highlighting there that there's been some recent investments in the grid to provide that additional resilience during flood events. And I guess particularly highlighting the transmission line from Windsor across the river that feeds approximately 3,500 premises from Cattai to Wisemans Ferry and the McDonald Valley. So that has been work that's been undertaken there. Then also I guess the failure of the three towns sewer. Obviously this is a Sydney Water system, so we're not an agency that's responsible for it, so that's with Sydney Water.

And obviously the issue there is a lot of these rely on power to the pumps, so unless those particular property owners have backup generators, then if power is lost, then that system fails. So highlighting there obviously that in the July flood event that there was actually a Sydney Water representative that was part of the emergency operations centre, so there was, I guess, a lot more direct action from Sydney Water in that regard.

Insurance-related issues obviously has been a growing issue for the Hawkesbury Valley, both in terms of the price and also now availability of flood insurance. It's sort of the premiums that have been sort of anecdotally provided are significant if at all people can get flood insurance. The previous Floodplain Committee had received a presentation from the Insurance Council of Australia, and there's a number of dot points included in the report there in terms of, I guess, the state of the insurance industry at the time and some suggestions about potential opportunities for residents in that regard. Waste-related issues, obviously Council considered at its September meeting the draft Waste and Resource Recovery Strategy, and then as part of that we had the section there that sort of talked about what we're doing waste-related during flood events and obviously looking to have a temporary transfer station at East Kurrajong and get approval for that in a more readily manner when flood events do happen, and also arrangements with other councils and suppliers to make sure that those waste collections and disposal can happen during those flood events.

And then I guess one of the big issues that we've particularly had in the recent flood events is obviously our evacuation routes, and this is a matter that's been before Council fairly recently in terms of resolutions of Council, I guess particularly associated with the Pitt Town route and issues of the failure of that route during recent flood events. So that's basically a quick summary. Lovely,

Thank you very much, Mr. Kearns. I won't put questions yet because questions can be given to staff in the debate. I might look for some direction from councillors for a recommendation, whether it's in the business paper or some other format. Councillor Conolly.

Happy to start with the recommendation in the business paper, but then I have some questions that might lead to something else.

Yeah, no worries. Thank you. Do I have a seconder for that? Councillor Sheather. Thank you, Councillor Conolly.

So I have a couple of questions. Firstly, is there any update on the Richmond Bridge duplication project in terms of the stage two and the location of the actual bridge?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We're expecting an update from Transport for New South Wales probably late October, early November in terms of their route selection. So obviously they've released the preferred options report, and they're assessing the various sort of comments that they've got as part of that. But yeah, we're expecting sort of late October, November is going to be the final route.

Thank you. On page 16 , there's a long list of items that were outstanding issues from the floodplain risk management committee. However, when I had a look at the business paper for the meeting of Council that looked at reassigning ongoing matters to the current committees, most of those did not appear. And I'm just wondering where this list has come from, and if these are matters that were not ongoing, or if in fact we have missed reassigning a whole lot of ongoing matters. Just wondering how that's happened.

Thank you, Councillor. So I'd taken that from that list. That's my understanding is that I had taken that from the list. Okay. All right. Well, perhaps that's probably as far as we can get that, but I think that needs

To be looked at because I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but there was four outstanding items in the list that was proposed to be reassigned, and a lot of these things were not in it. So I think we need to review whether anything's been lost, and if it hasn't been lost, review how it got in this report. This is a good report, and there's some good things in here, especially about the gauges at South Creek and Narramundi. There's a lot of information here. Most of it, obviously, not the responsibility of Council. Council can't really do anything about the Three Towns sewer. Council can't do much about insurance other than continue to advocate for flood mitigation. Council is doing what it can in terms of waste and is working with the EPA, I can see .

Council's been very big on advocacy around evacuation routes, but again, not much of that's got anything to do with Council. And in terms of power supply during flooding, I think that's been well answered. It looks like Council tried to get involved and didn't get the funding because essentially it wasn't our job, was the answer we got back. I think that presentation is a good presentation. It is a little bit old now. I think one action that could be put forward is that we ask Endeavour for an update, a detailed update on what they've done in the meantime and what else they could do if they had the money , and so at least we know what would be possible. Would you

Like to add that as a point?

Yeah, that's one point I would add.

Are you okay with that, Councillor Sheather?

Thank you.

Sorry, thank you, Councillor Conolly. Any further discussion? Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Oh, sorry, Councillor Reardon did have her light on. Does it matter what— Councillor Reardon, then Councillor Lyons-Buckett. I

Just think the

Evacuation routes are of paramount importance. Absolutely. Thank you, Councillor Reardon. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think that what's missing from the report is that we have a resolution to look at electricity options around. This is an old report from Endeavour Energy, and we could get an update from them, but there's a whole scope of ideas and opportunities and things that we can be looking at. And I think that some of the information in this, I disagree with Councillor Conolly. There was a very long list, and I've been referring to it over the last couple of years of things that hadn't been addressed through, that weren't carried over from the Floodplain Risk Management Committee, which of course now I guess we can just refer back now that that committee will be operating as a subcommittee as per our last resolution at the last council meeting.

So I think those things could be better taken up within that type of forum where we have both the time and the interactive debate that means that we can discuss around those things and then bring it to an open meeting committee like this when we've actually looked at those various aspects around the different, for example, around the river height gauges. We have to continue to have the pressure on in our advocacy for that. We can't just say we've got a report now, we stop doing it, because what was happening before was that we were being able to engage directly with the people responsible, and that was how we were getting some results previously. Now we've had a lull in that because we haven't been doing anything .

When we reinvigorate the Floodplain Risk Management Committee, we can again look at those and engage with the various agencies around that sort of information. So I think the staff of the report, of course, most of those reports and the addresses to the committee were prior to any of the floods. So since then we've had a number of flood incidents, and it's always Always good to get the updated information around that, and I'll look forward to doing that when we can move on and implement those resolutions from Council that are specifically looking at some of those issues individually. I do have to say I disagree with Councillor Conolly in saying that it's nothing to do with Council and very little.

We are, of course, as reiterated again, primarily responsible for floodplain risk management, and we do that with the resources of the State Government, which means that we then have to have the engagement with those State agencies around that sort of information. We need to have access to Infrastructure New South Wales to hear what's going on. They're not here tonight. We need to be engaging and following up on those various things, and I look forward to doing that. But I think getting an update from Endeavour Energy would be good because I know they did a very good job at restoring power during the last event . But there are also a lot of other avenues that we can be looking at around securing electricity supply, particularly in relation to continuity and security of telecommunications.

And if we do have a role, and I believe that we should be fulfilling that role. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Lyons-Bucket. Councillor Feigl. Yeah,

Thank you, Madam Mayor . My question through you, I don't know if you can answer this. We were up at Colo Heights on the weekend, and there's a remarkable generator set that was built by Endeavour Energy, which is near the RFS and the hall there. I think that's the only gen set probably in the whole LGA. So the question is, why do they build it there and why haven't they built any more? Now , obviously, I'll just move on a bit. Somebody might turn around and say, Oh, well, it's a diesel. Well, there is a service station, I think, a little bit further up the road. So that's a cop-out if they said, Well, they haven't got fuel. There's fuel around the LGA. But

The gen set was manually turned on by certain people up there, I think. I think Councillor Willer, I think we were told. Might have been our RFS officer that might turn that on manually. That supplies a reasonable area in that small community. I'm just interested in why Endeavour hasn't gone for more infrastructure like that within Hawkesbury, especially on the western side and other certain areas.

Thank you, Councillor. Just see if there's any staff through the General Manager available to answer that question. Take it on notice. We'll take that one on notice. Thank you, Councillor Veigel. Any further? Councillor Wheeler.

Oh, sorry, thank you, Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor.

With the electricity, the power supply, it says that recently the lines have been lifted, the supply from Cattai, Wisemans Ferry, McDonald Valley, Ebenezer, Sackville, all even other places. It says that if we have a flood of 13.9, similar, that it would be clear, but it doesn't say how high the line was lifted. Is that

A question for staff?

If the staff are aware of it, but otherwise, if we can get that information down the track, rather than just say it's been lifted above the 13.9, it'd be nice to know whether it was 20 or 3.

We'll take that on notice. Or would you like to respond?

Thanks, Councillor. Just in conversations with Endeavour Energy, the lines across the river are raised 3 metres, which will give us that extra clearance when the flood does reach that 14 metres, so.

That's taken up around 17 metres.

Yeah.

Thank you. Further in the document, it talks about the Hawkesbury transmission station located at the corner of Hamman and Ferry Road supplies Hawkesbury LGA and parts of the Hills and Penrith and Blacktown. And it goes on to say all the areas within that area that it supplies. But I was of the view that that substation was around the 15 metres. Can we find that out? Because if it's supplying all the areas that they're saying and they've been lifted up to 17 metres, we won't need it at 17 metres if South Windsor goes out. I know there's levy banks around it, but they've got a driveway that goes through the levy bank, and there's no security in that.

Just a moment, Councillor Sheather, would you like to take that one on notice, or would you like to answer that

Question?

Take that one on notice, and

We'll get a response to

Councillors in an email. Yep, great. Thank you.

And one more question in relation to insurance. It's on page 19, fourth dot from the bottom, and there was a question asked about Racing Warragamba Dam, and there was a response come back: the risk assessment, 16% reduction for flood price. And then it goes on to say Launceston and Roma, Tasmania and middle of Queensland, 34 to 75% reduction in the day of mitigation opening. Do we know what that is, what that means exactly?

Thank you, Mr. Jones.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So when those particular flood mitigation measures were actually constructed and implemented, the insurance premiums in those locations dropped by those figures between 34 and 75%. So I think in the case of the Roma one, I think it was a flood levy that was constructed. Yep, yep, and that led to the drop in premiums. Yep. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Sheather. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. A number of, I guess I'll run through them in the order that they're in the business paper. I'm disappointed to see that we're still not getting the cumulative overland flood study until 2023, and I understand that hopefully that modelling will be tighter, given that we've got some more data that can be added to those models. But we have been waiting for this for a long time. I wonder, do we know if this will include the impacts outside the LGA, so the impacts of the South Creek catchment, for example, on our catchment and of the Colooney chain of ponds, the areas within the hills? I think we've been told previously that that information wouldn't necessarily be included and that it wouldn't impact, which seems ludicrous .

So it would be nice to know whether that information is going to come to us this time and what the impacts of that are going to be on our LGA, because certainly the opinion of the public is that that is impacting. I'm a bit disappointed to see that we still don't have a formal response to our question about gauges. Eighteen months is surely enough time for the relevant agency to respond to a council. Can I suggest that we ask them again, ask them the same question again?

And what I'd really like to know is when these gauges will be installed and when they'll be online so that people can refer to them. I don't think that, I think we're being, I think some people are accepting the idea that we'll have cameras on various points and that will help, but that's not the same as the data that comes from flood gauges, and it doesn't allow that data to be collected and feed into modelling. So I think those gauges are still very relevant, and it's about time they were installed. The power information, I mean, that's helpful, but it is old. It would also be helpful, I think, to meet with Endeavour Energy and discuss the impacts of the distribution and the way they shut down, because it appears that rather than, because of the way that the electricity grid is distributed, they're shutting down things as a matter of convenience, and that takes out not only the low point that's being flood impacted, but it takes out the high point.

So if you look at somewhere like Grono Farm Road, for example, it takes out the bottom end of Grono Farm Road, which is wet, but also turns out part of King Road, which is dry. According to the information that I've received, a smart grid should be able to do better than that, and it should be able to learn how to cut that distribution more effectively so that we don't have great swathes of the community without power for a considerable period of time because other areas have gone under. Just on the Three Towns sewer, in case anybody is reading this and thinking that it's okay to plug your generator into your sewer system, you're not supposed to do that. In fact, in most systems, I think that facility is locked off.

So don't plug your sewer into your generator. It's clearly not fit for purpose, though. They ran out of pumps so many blue in this last setting. Council does have a role here. We've got two roles. Firstly is advocacy to the state government agency that has given us a system that is not fit for purpose in a flood-affected area. But secondly, we have a role as the compliance agency. Part of the reason that the Three Town Sewer System fails is because we have properties that still have their stormwater plumbed into the sewer. That overloads the system and means that the whole thing shuts down or pumps burn out progressively, so that you have to have a poo truck stationed in Wilberforce or Freeman's Reach or Ebenezer to take the effluent away so that it doesn't flow into people's backyards.

So we do have a role here. And while there was supposed to be inspection at the time of installation, that clearly was some dodgy practice going on. Well , I think we do need to be advocating further to the state government about this. The insurance stuff, I think, is still deeply concerning. What I would really like to get is some figures on the percentage of the LGA insured, uninsured and underinsured, the premiums that people are paying, and the number of claims that we've had and whether those claims, A, are successful and B, are adequate. So, for example, those of us who went out on Saturday to Lower Portland heard about a family who have had to move out of their property. They can't move back in to it because they can't get trades through because of the condition of the road.

Nor can they book trades because they don't know when the road will be open. But their insurance has paid for their accommodation up until the end of October. After that, they're on their own. And I think this is the information that needs to flow back to us so that we can carry out our advocacy role, but also so that we can be really clear about the implications of this on our community when we're making plans for how we deal with them. With these events. I would also like some information on how many people are still displaced and whether their accommodation costs are being covered by either the insurance company or the state government, and really some indication of how those people are managing.

This may not be a direct role of council, but it's very clear that if council doesn't do this, there's not a lot of other people that are. And that our community, and I think it was made very clear to us on Saturday, that the community expects us to be doing this stuff, whether it's our job or not, because we are the first line of both communication and therefore action often for these people. It would be also helpful if some information could come back to council about where we're up to with waste collection or where public works is up to. So Walmsley Road apparently now has access for vehicles to come in from Public Works. That hasn't happened yet, and their streets are full of piles of waste.

It's really hard on them. We know from flooding, from our current experience with flooding, that coming home to see the detritus of your life sitting on your front lawn is really damaging for people's mental health. They can't move on. They can't clean up. So could we lean on Public Works to get that done so that they can actually move on and feel like they're being attended to? They're currently very angry, and there's a level of despair, I think, in that community. We've still got skip bins. In Wilberforce, Lower Portland, various other places, can we perhaps do a bit of a roundup of whether this is happening or whether we need to be jumping up and down a bit more to get this done? And we've still clearly got some problems in Lower Portland in terms of bin collection and access as well.

If they could be flagged and acted on, that would be helpful. I've got three other things that don't fit anywhere into the business paper, and I don't know when to bring them up. So I don't know if we're going to have some other business or if I should bring them up now.

I don't think there was an intention to have any other business. So I guess if you want to raise them and then see if they're relevant in some context. Sure

So we haven't at any point recently discussed the other landslips that we've had that have affected people, for example on Redbank Creek. We've been told that there's in excess of four million dollars from the federal government to deal with communications towers, and I'd be keen to get some information about how we, as an agency who doesn't deal with communication towers, are going to deal with this gift from the federal government, which I'm sure gives them a warm fuzzy feeling, but just leads to us having yet another burden of infrastructure that we have to deliver that we really, when we've already got far more than we are normally equipped to do, and what we're supposed to do about that.

And then there's this additional issue where a number of people have spoken to me about incidences of Centrelink fraud. So it appears that because we're a flood-affected LGA, people are using people's addresses in order to make fraudulent claims to Centrelink. So they hack into Centrelink and they claim the flood. The $1,000 flood payment, but then they've got access to people, to all of People Centrelink details, and they're starting to siphon off pensions. I think we need to flag this with the federal member and make sure that firstly people are aware that this is going on, but secondly that the government is aware of it and can start launching some recovery action. We've got people now who don't have access to their pensions at all because they've been siphoned off by somebody else.

So the person, the mayor and I spoke to on Friday, is now missing two weeks or two—a month's worth of her pension. I'm not quite sure what she's supposed to eat. We've got other people who are receiving three and four letters to Centrelink addressed to other people using their address so that they can fortunately claim the flood levy. So this is an ongoing problem that I think we need to be aware of, and we need to make some representations.

Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. A lot of those items that you've discussed that I've written down as you went through heading by heading, we have identified through our visit on Saturday, which I took extensive notes on and have forwarded that to staff. So if you're happy to leave a lot of those in the hands of that email chain, we will leave it there. In terms of those other three items you have just mentioned, are you wanting to add them as a part of the recommendation, or are you happy if tomorrow you and I work on an email together to go to the federal member?

I'm happy to take most of those as questions on notice. Yeah. Can I just ask if they're part of an email chain, if we can be copied in to that email chain, because otherwise we don't know what's happening. Yeah, and I'm certainly happy to participate in some sort of representation to the federal member.

Okay, great. Well, we'll take those other items, three items you've mentioned at the end, I'll talk to the general manager tomorrow and we'll work out something to put together. And as I said, those other items you've identified, I apologise to the staff for the long list of action items we've asked for answers on, but I guess that was the point of our exercise on Saturday, was to go out and see what the communities are facing in our outer areas of our LGA and see it for ourselves. And I guess when we're talking about floods here, it probably is the right time to say that I think that that exercise was extremely valuable for all of us as councillors because even though we may hear about some of those roads or the sand still piled up at Lower Macdonald or the potholes along Settlers Road or St Albans Road, I think seeing it with your own eyes is quite a real thing that we need to do.

And as one of the cars who drove the entire time, I apologise to my passengers for some of my language, but I know that while that was one experience that we went through just in one day, that's the experience of many in our LGA every single day while they try and get to work and get their kids to school. So I do want our community to know that we are following up all of those requests with staff, and we will have an answer to you as soon as we most possibly can. Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. There's two things that we didn't see when we went down there the other day. One was communication , and we've got a pretty lucky community down there that they didn't cop that bashing that Singleton copped when they were in flood. And I know that we went and seen the system they got for communication now. Not everybody carries one of those in a flood. There's probably one to a household, I'm not sure, the like, and I expect there's more than one person in a household. But they carry telephones, and they don't work. And we need to make sure they do work, not only in the St Albans area, but other areas around our city that fail because the power went off. And some of them have got generators.

They got there too late to fuel them up. And we need to perhaps work with the RFS. We'll ask them to work with the RFS, because most locals are involved with that and could probably provide that service for them. I don't care what they do, but they need to do something. The other thing that I bring up repeatedly is the ferries. We nearly lost two , and I want to see a plan of who is responsible for the ferries. Not one bloke sitting in a tinny, and we've got a ferry, we need to be responsible for two, and we need a plan for that. The Wiseman's Ferry, the level got up to a height that allowed the ferry to sit on top of the poles rather than against them. When the water went down, no service, got caught up on it and was out for weeks, then rectified.

Now, we spoke about the North Richmond bridge with a handrail, similar situation. But if the ferries go out, there is no replacement ferry. And we nearly lost the Sackville one when it went down, it was sitting on a building or a house block. Then, no big deal, they got it off, then closed it down for three days while they fixed the pylons up that were bent because it wasn't moored properly. So we've got people with road closed down there, no communication. When the ferries go off, most of them have got a 60k drive around. If there's an emergency, you're up the creek without a paddle. And these ferries, and they work very spasmodically, let me tell you. And on top of that, we had Wiseman's Ferry Road out at Cattai for five weeks.

It got to the stage where the RMS, or whatever they're called now, had to stop trucks going across Sackville Ferry because there's a two-hour wait in school hours. So we've got businesses on both sides of the river waiting for two hours because, well, you could get around. You could go out through Glenorie and back through Round Corner and back into Windsor. That's a good run, only about 80 k's. The ferries aren't council responsibility, but it's our responsibility to make sure the roads work and the services on that, whether bridges or ferries. And if one of the ferries were to break away, and it surprised me the flood before last that it didn't. I went down there when I could get there, and all it needed was a good lot of debris coming down the river.

There was one rope, but it was a big rope, but it's going into a block that's sitting in sand. How it didn't pull out, I don't know. But if it broke away, there is no vessel in the Hawkesbury, so from Sackville, we're talking about 80 k's down at Brooklyn, that could connect to that ferry to manoeuvre it. When it happened back in the 60s, the army was lowered onto the ferry with explosives to sink it, because the weight of the ferry in the floodwater, if it had hit the pylons on the Hawkesbury River Bridge, they were scared that it would knock the bridge out. So those sort of scenarios have been about for a while, and our community deserves better. I don't know where we need to bring it up, but you might like to have a talk to the general manager and see what process, whether it needs to go—and we have a presentation at the next—whether it needs to go on the floodplain committee or what, but we need to do something about it.

Floods aren't going away. Yeah,

Thank you, Councillor Sheather. I'm happy to add that question about ferries, perhaps in the email chain we were discussing with Councillor Wheeler, and include the state member on that, because talking about the landslips as well in Redbank Creek really isn't a federal matter. So maybe if we include the state and federal member on those four issues, then we can get that information and ask the relevant levels of government to provide those answers to us. So I will get that. I'll send a draft in conjunction with the general manager. We'll put a draft together of that email tomorrow and send it to councillors before we go out for any further feedback before it goes. And yes, you're right, we have a lot to deal with with floods, Councillor Sheather, but unfortunately we live in an LGA that is full of constraints, whether that is 85% bushland or whether that is the most dangerous floodplain in Australia.

Poor Mr Barton, he has to deal with it either way. So it's, and you know what, despite those constraints, we all still choose to live here because it's darn beautiful and the people are fantastic. So let's continue on with what we can. Councillor Veigel.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. While you're writing the letter, can I make a request, please? The

Insurance was in the Hawkesbury, I can only talk to my experience. They changed the insurance premium where I live from one in 100 to the PMF level, and they did that after the Picton floods of 2018. So when I caught it, right, it was considerably a large amount of money. It was probably about another $2,000 a year in premium. And when I questioned it, that's where it occurred, and I said, Why did you change it to the PMF level, which is about 28 metres? They say it's 28 metres, okay, from the one in 100, around about that. They said it came from a motion through the Insurance Council of Australia through state, and that's how they changed the premium. The further away from the 26, the more you pay.

So I'm at 20 metres, okay, so that's a couple of metres above the one in 100. They brought it down after negotiation, but it's still high, but everybody's dealing with the same issue. So they did that by stealth and they didn't tell anybody. When they did the premiums, they didn't go and write to anybody, no, we're taking it up, and we're using the PMF as totaling the overall premium for flood.

So— So what

Was your question

Well

I'd really like to ask why they changed it to the PMF, which is at a 26, and from the one in 100.

Yeah, I think our role there purely would be advocacy.

I think there's

Been a lot of discussion in the past about why they changed from the one in 100 to the PMF.

What being? What being wrought it?

Just to the general manager, we can put that question. Where do you see our level of involvement?

Perhaps simply writing a letter off to the Insurance Council or some other relevant body, I would imagine, Madam Mayor.

I can get that one done as well tomorrow and let you all see it before it goes.

Yeah, well, we’ve just polite from on their behalf and just give them the... why they changed it.

Thank you, Councillor

Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to refer back to a few things that I’m confused about. It seems that on— sorry, I’m using my iPad, which seems to want to freeze every five seconds. It seems on the, in the ordinary meeting of the 12th of April, we resolved to form,

To establish a working group that was going to report to this committee about the grant, the council’s grant-funded floodplain management projects. I was just wondering where we’re up to on that because it seems to me that some of the things we talk about here tonight are those things that we wanted that working group to look at. It says here that the working group has members. We’ve established what’s going to happen with that, so I wanted an update on

How that working group is going and whether there’s been any updates. Likewise, and I’m sorry, I will have to skip to my other page. Likewise, on the 19th of July, we resolved via a notice of motion to form a— to form a— and she’s lost the page, sorry— a working group on the. . . On power supply and natural disasters. So, if we're going to have in this resolution that we have Endeavour Energy provide an update,

Is that going to be an update to the working group that we've already resolved to have, or is that going to be a presentation to this committee so that the working group has some idea of what it is actually going to do ? I think that we need to start to get some things done and to bed down

Some of these things that we seem to endlessly talk about. I think that, you know, if we have a role to play in these things and we can genuinely do something that is going to get anything happening in the energy space, I don't know what that is, whether we have give up some land for community battery or something. I don't know what that is, but we have to start to nail that down. This endless talking about we have to sort of advocate and get people to explain things to us seems to me to be quite frustrating. So I guess I'll stop there and I'll just seek an update of those particular working groups. Thanks.

Thank you through General Manager. Do we have a staff member willing to answer that now or take that on notice? Mr Kearns? Yeah, thank you.

I can take the one in terms of the working group for the particular studies that we're undertaking, our floodplain studies. Obviously, we've got the review of the Hawkesbury Flood Risk Management Study and Plan and obviously the flood study and flood risk management study and plan for the Macdonald and Colo Rivers. So as yet that group hasn't met, but we are in a position to probably meet relatively soon, particularly for the Macdonald and Colo Rivers work to sort of highlight the work the consultants have undertaken in that regard. And yeah, so probably expecting to have that sort of first meeting relatively soon.

Thank you, Mr. Cairns. Is that all, Councillor? And the working group about the electricity supply, how is that going to work in with point one of the resolution? Mr. Cairns, do you have anything about that working group?

General Manager? Yeah, good question, Councillors. I'd have to follow that one up. Does the resolution talk about it being a council or working group? I just need to find out who that was, which of our staff team have actually got that being actioned.

You'll just get back to us on that in an email? Yep. Thank you. Councillor Kotlash, anything further?

Well, are we going to ask Endeavour Energy to provide an update to this committee or to that working group?

I know we need an answer tonight, yeah, as per the intended resolution. Can I suggest

It would be this committee, Councillors? I think that this working group I had envisaged was something a bit of a longer-term strategic think tank rather than an advocacy piece.

Right, okay. It says in the resolution, former council working group considers issues of electricity supply, including communication towers during natural disasters. The working group should review the challenges involved in supplying electricity in floods and potential situations, da da da da. So I think we have to— I'm just... I think we have to be mindful of what we actually want to achieve. And, you know, and I think we have a big role in advocacy, but I think we have to start narrowing that down so we pick our battles. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor.

Any further discussion?

No.

Yes, please.

Oh, sorry, I can't see. Yes, thank you, because we've got the motion on the board, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

That's all right. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And just with regard to those last two working groups, we did pass a resolution at the last meeting to incorporate those into a floodplain risk management group because the working groups hadn't met, and they were part of that resolution. So I think I'd like to thank you, Madam Mayor, for your list from the tour, which I was sorry to miss as I'm away on the weekend. But something that jumped out at me from that, and it relates in part to this committee and something that we committed to some time ago, and that was after we had the report after the fires, and that was a long time ago now, and the Leadbeater report, we were going to have a workshop, I think it was, or we were going to look at the actual role of councillors in the emergency management.

Now, we know there's a very strict protocol around operational matters, and a lot of the things that you've raised with the community raise are operational matters or for the emergency personnel. However, I did note that you had the community members were asking, for example, why we weren't involved in the community recovery barbecue and things like that. And I think that people do see us as their representatives, and they do want us to have— there is a layer that we're missing, and I know I go on about this, but there's a layer that we're missing as those conduits within the emergency management circle that councillors can play a role in. We're not engaging with the community. We had nobody here tonight from the community addresses.

We have, you know, four people watching the meeting or something. We are not reaching our community, and when the councillors who went out there have obviously got a lot of feedback from the community on all these sorts of issues. So I'm just mentioning this in the committee because we did have a— Have a commitment some time ago to look at that after Ann Ledger gave us the report around emergency management. So I'm hoping that at some point that can tie in, perhaps with what you're raising with your various, you know, contacts to other people. I just want to know at some point that we are going to clarify just exactly around what role we can do, how we can help. We often are speaking about advocacy, we're speaking about other things, but we do have a role, and we can't be just said to not be part of that role because we have a community expectation that we will be listening to them and what they've suffered and what they want to raise, and we will be bringing that into council.

And that's how we need to have a committee system operating, that we are that conduit between agencies, between our community, and we have to be able to fulfil that role. So if we can revisit that as we were going to do, and that would eliminate us having resolutions coming up all the time that can't be enacted because they disappear somehow or whatever. If we resolve to have a working group but that working group doesn't meet, we just really need to have a proper understanding of how we are being involved, how we're working alongside the emergency management personnel, how we're working with our staff who are delivering the operational matters. It's not ever about trying to be a part of the formalised and structured emergency management response or recovery.

It's about our role as elected members representing all of those people who are impacted. So I'm just foreshadowing that we either get that back on the agenda somehow from what we've resolved in the past. Or we can introduce that into some sort of a workshop so that we can actually address that question, because I think that came through clearly in your list that people were asking about that and that aspect of our role. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. You do raise a good point there, and yes, it certainly was brought up at the four of our locations on the weekend, hence why it's in my list. And Councillor Willer and I had also discussed that that might be something for our councillor roundtable before we do anything formal in a council meeting or a committee meeting, have that on the agenda in our councillor roundtable, which I'm not sure is going to occur tonight, given the time currently. We did not anticipate this meeting to go for so long. So I think, if you don't mind, we'll add that as one of our first topics to discuss in our roundtable, whether that is tonight or we reschedule that meeting. Okay. Any other discussion? No. Right of reply, Councillor Conolly.

I've got Conolly and seconded by Councillor Sheather. Okay.

Look, only to say that I think perhaps people coming with the right intentions and still not maybe getting the system we're using. This is the committee. This is the disaster and emergency committee. So it's of no use to come here and say council should be doing all these things in all these areas and then not resolve any of it, because nothing's going to go back to council except this report and this recommendation. So this is what I think council should do out of this report, which is why I put it forward. But it's no use coming to council meetings and saying, you know, council should be doing this, or we've got a role to play in this, this, this and this, and then resolving none of it. But hopefully we can get some action out of this. Thanks.

Thank you very much. I will put the motion as on the board. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert. Absent is Councillor Dogramaci. Councillor Zemprogno, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Bucket, and Councillor Wheeler. I declare that carried. That's all for our business tonight. I'll thank our councillors for their contribution to the debate. I'll also thank our special guests. I'm not sure if our members of the RFS are still online or they decided to go and call it a night. But thank you very much to our Hawkesbury SES Unit Commander, Kevin Jones, for your contribution.

And I guess we might just very quickly, while it's the end of the meeting though, take the opportunity—our Superintendent Andrew Garner here from New South Wales Police was present at our meeting, didn't need to make a contribution tonight, but he is our new superintendent. So we might just formally welcome him to the Hawkesbury and say that we look forward to your contribution and working with you. And hopefully there's no disasters where we have to work too closely in the near future. But thank you, and we look forward to having you around. With that said, I would like to end the meeting tonight at 9:13 p.m. Thank you, everybody.