Writer
Chas Keys
Chas Keys is a former academic and emergency management practitioner. He was from 1997 to 2004 the Deputy Director General of the NSW State Emergency Service, with responsibility for planning to warn and evacuate people from approaching floods.
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Raise Warragamba dam, raise the risk to the environment
More housing, less habitat. More extinctions, less vegetation. With the raising of Australia’s largest urban water supply dam, Sydney would be further primed to emulate the flood disasters of Brisbane. Continue reading »
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The political problem of defining “flood prone”
The words ‘flood’ and prone’ are simple enough to comprehend, but when they are put next to each other in a sentence they can quickly become problematic. Continue reading »
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Alarming inconsistency: NSW Government Ministers on development in flood-prone areas
The floods on the eastward-flowing rivers of New South Wales have abated, but when they were at their height there were some alarming differences between state government ministers on the important matter of development on the floodplains of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River system. Continue reading »
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The ‘levee paradox’: why has development in floodplains exploded?
In March we were reminded that flooding is a problem in Australia. It is a problem partly because of the way we accommodate our growing population on floodplains. Continue reading »
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The meaning of the word ‘floodplain’ – and the consequences of building on one
One of the great challenges of city building is building sustainably. Many of our towns and cities are built at least in part on floodplains, which are by definition problematic as places on which to build. Continue reading »
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Re-thinking flood mitigation and development, especially in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley
The rain has gone, the floods on the eastward-flowing rivers are receding in Queensland and New South Wales and the focus has shifted from response to recovery. But there’s another important matter which needs to be addressed mitigation, or the means by which we can reduce the impacts of future flooding. Let’s look at this Continue reading »
