Standardising the Standards in the Parramatta River Catchment

As part of the Parramatta River Masterplan “Duba, Budu, Barra, Ten Steps to a Living River” (2019), one of the steps is to “Standardise the Standards”, involving review of policies and practices that impact water quality, and establishment of whole of catchment land use policy and statutory planning mechanisms. Sydney Water, as the lead agency for implementation of the Masterplan, engaged Alexa McAuley, David Knights and Dr Peter Davies to undertake a project focused on this step of the Masterplan. Our project is particularly focused on land use planning and development controls, including LEP and DCP controls, which are currently being revised by the catchment councils.

The project is a timely opportunity to review “best practice” WSUD controls, which have now been a part of some council DCPs for over a decade. During this time, WSUD has become a more mainstream practice in new development, but challenges have also emerged as the scale of WSUD implementation has increased and the focus has shifted to infill development. A new generation of WSUD planning provisions for the Parramatta River catchment should both be clearly linked to the Masterplan via a strong evidence base, while also being practical and realistic to implement.

The project involves research and policy development, supported by a range of stakeholder engagement activities from interviews and focus groups to workshops.

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