Theme 6-5-Community participation in stormwater management in the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment, Australia.

Abstract

In Australia, over the last few decades the main effort in stormwater management has been associated with scientific and engineering pursuits, but it may be argued that stormwater management now requires a focus on the social sciences. Community involvement is now an important part of stormwater management. The experience of stormwater managers in the Sydney region indicates that attracting community interest is a very difficult component of the stormwater management planning process. So much so that many of the community meetings organised as part of stormwater management planning were not well attended. Low attendance at public forums and lack of response to community consultation surveys, resulted in only token community consultation.

Traditionally community consultation provides the end product of a decision-making process to the public for comments. In order to achieve best practice stormwater management, we need to involve the local community in a more meaningful way. Meaningful involvement entails a transparent decision-making process with a greater degree of community participation throughout the process. To facilitate this, the Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment Management Trust (HNCMT), Department of Land and Water Conservation, University of Western Sydney - Hawkesbury, Penrith, Blacktown and Hawkesbury City Councils have jointly developed a Decision Support System (DSS) for stormwater management. This project was funded by the Natural Heritage Trust. The DSS has been described by some critics as 'second generation stormwater management planning', due to the fact that it makes the process more transparent and enables extensive community participation.