We are actively involved with the following organisations
Floodplain Risk Management Advisory Committee
With the assistance of our Floodplain Risk Management Advisory Committee, we are developing floodplain risk management studies and plans for the City's flood affected areas.
The Committee meets every 3 months and includes Councillors, community representatives, Council staff, representatives from relevant neighbouring councils and representatives from state agencies such as the NSW Government and the NSW State Emergency Service.
Other activites
We also comply with the NSW Government's Flood Prone Land Policy as outlined in the NSW Government's Flood risk management manual. Council has a duty of care to manage lands subject to flooding within its Local Government Area. This means that we collect and monitor flood information, review the information to understand the flood risk across our City and develop measures to reduce flood impact.
We enforce development controls that include setting minimum floor levels, prescribing flood compatible materials, ensuring new buildings are structurally sound, assessing flood impacts to others from development and evaluating potential flood evacuation routes.
Where possible we are upgrading old and undersized drainage networks to increase capacity in larger storm events and reduce local overland flooding. We own and maintain a number of flood detention basins, levees, stormwater drainage assets and river banks that all aim to reduce flood risk and the impacts of flooding.
Through our Development Control Plan Part J - Water Sensitive Urban Design and Integrated Water Cycle Management and 2020 WSUD developer handbook we require some new developments (except low density housing) to provide on-site detention to temporarily store water during storm events and, in turn, reduce flooding to downstream communities. This is particularly important in older areas where little to no open space is available to retrofit stormwater detention basins and other drainage infrastructure.
In addition, we and/or developers construct regional facilities such as stormwater detention basins and water sensitive urban design infrastructure. These facilities allow for the storage and treatment of stormwater thus reducing flooding downstream and improving the quality of water discharged to our natural creek systems.