By Councillor Mary Lyons Buckett

The Hawkesbury Floodplain Risk Management Plan 2025 presented our Council with a rare opportunity: to take expert recommendations and use them to make our community safer, stronger, and better prepared for future floods. Instead, eight Councillors chose to ignore the advice of specialists and exclude critical planning controls, citing fears about property values, insurance costs, and - whether stated outright or not - climate change denial.

The irony is stark. Councillors often lament the increasing costs of insurance and the difficulties residents face after a flood event. Yet, when presented with a tangible way to mitigate those risks - implementing a 1:200 flood planning level to ensure new developments are built with flood resilience in mind - most Councillors turned away. This decision not only weakens our long-term flood preparedness but also leaves existing residents in limbo, stuck with rising insurance premiums and no clear strategy for improving flood safety.

The 1:200 flood planning level was just one recommendation from the extensive study, but it became the focal point of opposition. However, the plan offered multiple strategies to improve flood resilience, including house-raising, buybacks, changes to planning controls, and better evacuation routes. These are the kinds of measures that could reduce our community’s vulnerability and lessen financial burdens over time.

Let’s be clear: the proposed changes would not have rezoned land or prohibited development. They would have simply ensured that future building in flood-prone areas accounted for real and present flood risks. Currently, 181 undeveloped lots would have been subject to these updated controls, requiring habitable spaces to be built slightly higher and encouraging more flood-resilient construction methods and materials. Other regions in Australia and around the world are adopting these types of measures to strengthen their disaster readiness. Our Council, however, opted for the opposite approach - one that does nothing to reduce our exposure and may ultimately place us in a worse position.

The flood planning level is a tool to guide safe, sustainable development. It does not alter the height of floodwaters, change flood risk calculations for insurance companies, or automatically devalue property. What it does do is help prevent future tragedies by ensuring that new development is built with flood safety in mind. The alternative - continuing to approve developments without updated flood controls - only increases the danger to lives and property.

The decision to discard expert advice flies in the face of years of calls for stronger flood mitigation measures. It ignores both local and global evidence about the impacts of changing weather patterns and flooding events. And it leaves our community increasingly vulnerable, both physically and financially.

Only four Councillors - myself, Peter Ryan, Danielle Wheeler, and Amanda Kotlash - voted in favour of implementing the full expert recommendations. The remaining eight Councillors voted to reject them.

Council had the chance to lead, to act, to make Hawkesbury safer. Instead, it caved to fearmongering. When the next flood comes - and it will - residents will remember who stood for resilience and who stood in the way.