A key document justifying the construction of the $450 million Tillegra Dam failed to address adequately the impact on Aboriginal and early colonial sites and artefacts, internal planning documents show.
A memo signed by the state’s most senior heritage bureaucrat, Petula Samios, criticises the mitigation measures proposed by Hunter Water Corp as inadequate and ”avoiding best practice”.
The proposed 450 billion-litre dam, on the Williams River in the Hunter near Dungog, would inundate an area the size of Sydney Harbour, submerging two heritage listed sites, the Quart Pot/Munni Cemetery and Munni House.
Ms Samios, the director of the Planning Department’s heritage branch, criticised her colleagues for ignoring advice given in August last year that Hunter Water’s environmental assessment report was so poor it was ”not adequate for public exhibition”.
”Despite this advice, the EAR was subsequently put on exhibition in September 2009 with documents which still demonstrated departure from Heritage Council guidelines, terminology and from prior specific advice for this proposal provided to Hunter Water in December 2007,” she said.
In its response to concerns raised by a number of government agencies and local Aborigines and dairy farmers, Hunter Water said its heritage assessment was undertaken by experienced heritage specialists in accordance with applicable legislation, guidelines and acceptable industry practice.
Subsurface testing of the area revealed evidence of past Aboriginal occupation in the form of stone artefacts at eight discrete locations.
Given the inundation, it would be impossible to avoid damaging the sites, though excavating and removing artefacts would reduce the impact to an acceptable level and photographing them would provide a record, Hunter Water said.
But an indigenous elder, Lionel Ridgeway said customary law prevented Aboriginal people working on archaeological digs. ”We believe it is against the law for Hunter Water to touch our heritage,” he said.
Hunter Water also proposed dismantling and moving the Munni House homestead, which is heritage-listed as a good example of early white settlement patterns in the 1830s.
The 80 known burials in 55 graves dating from 1923 in the Quart Pot/Munni Cemetery, could be exhumed and reinterred in a new cemetery if families wished, or left undisturbed and submerged once the dam filled.
But the memo, discovered in an upper house call for papers on Tillegra Dam, revealed the Heritage Branch demanded at least eight other conditions of approval be imposed on Hunter Water, including having a qualified heritage consultant personally approved by the director-general of planning to supervise the handling of artefacts and sites.
The Greens MP John Kaye called on the Minister for Planning, Tony Kelly, to delay approval until further archaeological investigations could be carried out.
”Going ahead with the planning process without a rigorous heritage assessment and plan risks destroying the important legacy of this ancient valley,” Dr Kaye said.
A spokesman for Mr Kelly said: ”The Department of Planning is finalising its independent merit assessment of the project and it would be inappropriate to speculate on the outcome of that process at this stage.”
