Wollongong City Council has adopted its Climate Change Adaptation Plan at its meeting tonight, Monday 14 March 2022.
The Plan outlines the key hazards and risks our city faces from climate change, and sets out the recommended steps we can take to respond to these risks and reduce their potential impacts.
"When this report was being prepared there was no way we could have foreseen that we would be discussing this matter on the floor of Council. We are in the midst of a significant clean up following a huge storm event and the high levels of rainfall we've seen of late – the volume and frequency of both are potentially attributable to by climate change,'' Wollongong City Lord Mayor Councillor Gordon Bradbery AM said.
"We were very fortunate with last week's storm when you compare what we're facing to the problems and challenges of the North Coast, Shoalhaven and parts of Sydney. But we do have a significant clean-up effort underway as the rain has resulted in a pot holes on our roads, some of our beaches have significant scarping that requires mechanical intervention to made safe, and we've a large amount of debris to clean up on our beaches and in our city's culverts.
"All of this is the result of a major storm event that follows a prolonged period of rainfall. It's this type of weather that's predicted to be one of the ongoing impacts to our city through climate change.''
The Adaptation Plan works alongside the Climate Change Mitigation Plan that was adopted by Council in 2020. Between these two Plans, Council has introduced actions to both reduce the extend and rate of climate change and to manage its impact on our community and assets.
The Climate Change Action Plan has 73 actions for Council to implement, with 27 of them expected to be delivered between now and 2026. Many of these actions are focussed on continuing the work already underway by Council to reduce the risk of hazards such as flooding, bushfire and coastal erosion. These actions are divided into a number of categories including heat, emergency and bushfire management, floodplain management, coastal management to minimise the impacts of rising sea levels and more intense storms, and urban greening. They're also broken up into short (2021-2030), medium (2030-2050) and long-term (2050—2070) goals.
"Plans like this are important because the set out how Council is going to work towards putting the measures in place to best prepare our city for the impact of climate change,'' Cr Bradbery said.
"We need to consider to how we will respond as a community to more hot days and extended heat events, to manage and improve our stormwater infrastructure so that it works effectively during wet weather and proactively maintain bushfire trails and other infrastructure. When you're looking at the actions and the goals, it's clear that we can't do this overnight. We need to incorporate each of these steps into our business plan and our delivery program so that we can continue to ramp up the steps over the next 50 years.''
