ARMIDALE Dumaresq Mayor Herman Beyersdorf is seeking urgent meetings with NSW water minister Niall Blair over how new legislation impacts on the $3.4 million upgrade of Dumaresq Dam.
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Council will also re-assess its planned works program in light of the new Dam Safety Bill just passed through Parliament.
“I will be seeking clarity regarding the impact of the new legislation ... and particularly when the new legislation will come into force,” Cr Beyersdorf said yesterday.
In 2012, the NSW Dams Safety Committee, tasked with regulating the state’s 378 prescribed dams, advised Council it had to revise Dumaresq Dam wall’s standard to withhold a one-in-100,000 year flood.
That was in spite of the fact such a flood would completely envelop the city, regardless of the 380 megalitres stored in Dumaresq Dam.
Council was forced to pay Arup consultants nearly $300,000 for a review on best ways of proceeding with the upgrade.
It recommended strengthening the existing wall at a cost of about $3.4 million; an action unanimously supported at a community forum in October last year and adopted by Council in February.
Cr Beyersdorf said at the time a special rate variation, over a period of about five or six years, or about $250 per ratepayer, would help pay for the spend.
But that could now prove unnecessary.
An independent review of the Dams Safety Committee found its view of dam safety to be too narrow and based solely on engineering-based solutions.
The new act means the committee must undertake a full cost-benefit analysis when recommending safety measures for dams and also ensure a mix of people with expertise are part of the merit-based board, including dam managers and people with emergency management experience.
Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall said the new legislation brought common sense to the issue of dam safety.
“Finally, some common-sense will be brought to bear, via this new legislation, to dam safety in NSW,” Mr Marshall said.
