While state government cools slightly on once highly-touted developments, array of experts decry plans for any housing on floodplain
There is also a perverse notion of the “levee paradox”, which means raising the wall could make future floods more dangerous.“The idea is you build flood control infrastructure like levee banks or you raise a dam and it means politicians say great we can relax and develop more on the flood plain,” Jamie Pittock, a professor in environment and society at the Australian National University, says.
Ayres, the biggest supporter of raising the wall inside the NSW government, has repeatedly said raising the dam wall would not be a boon for property developers.Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morningthat the population within the floodplain was expected to increase by about 134,000 over the next 30 years, about double the current number of residents.
But many experts believe planning standards are out of date. Typically, residential rezonings are based on the level of a “one-in-100-year flood”. But many say such events are happening more frequently. Even Perrottet agreed this week that “perhaps” it is no longer an adequate descriptor of recent floods.
Hall said the one-in-100 measure was no longer adequate in a situation where “the sorts of worst-case outcomes once predicted on paper are actually playing out”.
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