CITY of Swan residents attended the July ordinary council meeting to question how the city was managing issues related to groundwater and flooding within the area.

Swan Valley Ratepayers and Residents Association president Humphrey Boogaerdt asked the city what swift action it was taking to stop environmental damage by improving water plans.

City of Swan operations executive director Matthew MacPherson said the question had to be taken on notice.

Mr Boogaerdt asked the city what actions were to be taken to improve their water management plan once they were aware of the shortcomings of the management plans they’d been following.

“At a previous council meeting the (City of Swan) chief executive officer (Stephen Cain) advised that as with each development the city has, it’s obliged to follow the locally approved water management plan,” he said.

“It sets the criteria for the development and the criteria by which the city enacts those works.

“The City of Swan knows that the water management plan does not work because there are problems it has created, so there are two options.

“Do nothing and leave everything as it is or seek changes in design and approval by bringing the standard up to a level that does not create havoc.”

Mr MacPherson said the water management plans that are now in place were assumed to be fit for purpose at the time and new elements introduced in the process such as developments formed complex interacting parts.

“There’s a number of interacting parts in regard to water management and the various water management plans,” he said.

“A lot of those are related to the development themselves and given that the city is one of the last in the approval chain, a lot of those issues with the water management plans is the information that’s fed into it at the very start of the process.

“Our obligation is to make sure whatever was put in at the start of the process is functional towards the end.

“The assumption, critically, is that those previously approved water management plans were fit for purpose at the time.”

Mr Boogaerdt pushed back against the idea the City of Swan didn’t have any indication of the future flooding issues at the time the management plans were first drafted.

“The City of Swan cannot claim that flooding due to urban development is a new problem,” he said.

“Due diligence by the city should have uncovered that even in 1984 it was recognised that in Perth groundwater levels were noted to rise rather than fall following urbanisation.

“The city (should) have realised years ago that water management strategies are not fit for purpose.

“My question… can the city show the water management plans for Brabham stage three and Brooklands are of a better quality, incorporating environmental constraints and effects on surrounding areas, than the ones that were created at the first development of the north-east corridor?”

Flooding a City of Swan responsibility: DPLH reported residents experiencing flooding following development happening in the north-east corridor in Swan.

The report explained the lack of requirements for developers to ensure water didn’t impact neighbouring properties meant preventing flooding on neighbouring homes wasn’t a priority.

Mr MacPherson said best practice often didn’t keep pace with the innovation that it needed to keep pace with.

“Particularly with standards and guidelines of the day, without knowing what particular stages of some of these developments and where they came through, it may be the case that there has been incremental change,” he said.

“It may be the case that some of the developments are actually based on best practice as it was in the day when the subdivision was proposed and the approvals went through.

“That being said, I think there is consistent recognition amongst the industry and in particular areas around Perth that water management needs to be far more of a critical aspect early on in development.

“I’d say that the City of Swan is no orphan in that particularly with other estates and developments around the outer metro area where water management through those is becoming an increasing focus.

“The standards are probably at the point at which they’ll need to catch up nowadays.”

Mr Cain said he had spoken with WA planning commission (WAPC) chair Emma Cole about water management on July 3 and the WAPC board would come out to inspect later in the month.

“These are issues that are now being more prevalent in other parts of Perth and Baldivis and East Wanneroo,” he said.

“At the board level, the WAPC is far more aware of the issues and the need to undertake more holistic work on some very complex geologies.”