User:Kate Shmidt/Penrith Lakes

Penrith Lakes new article content ... The Penrith Lakes Scheme is the end product of remediating one of the largest open cut quarries in the southern hemisphere. 1935 hectares of the iconic Hawkesbury/Nepean River floodplain is being transformed, from an exhausted sand and gravel extraction site to dedicated conservation parkland. The completed parkland will provide 770 hectares of lakes and 1200 hectares of re-establishing ecological communities. Together, the Scheme will roughly equal six times the size of and will be the largest recreational area in Australia outside the national parks. Penrith Lakes is generally bounded by the Nepean River on the south and west, Smith Road to the north and the recently relocated Castlereagh, Church Lane and West Wilchard Road to the east. The project is a joint venture between private interests of, Pty Limited, (Australia) Pty Ltd and the to adaptively reuse the near exhausted quarry as a major recreational facility for the people of western Sydney. Dedication to the State Government of the completed Scheme by the joint venture partners is administered through a Deed of Agreement. The Deed was conceptualised and signed in 1987 to assist with the delivery mechanisms of a range of recreation and state-significant conservation outcomes. History The Penrith Lakes Scheme has been an integral part of the Penrith Valley landscape for many years and quarrying has been conducted here for hundreds of years. In 1837 the sandstone for St Stephens Church in High Street, Penrith, was extracted from the Howell’s sandstone quarry at the northern end of Penrith Lakes. Sandstone from this quarry also built the foundations of the public schools at Agnes Banks, Castlereagh, Cranebrook, Penrith and Emu Plains. In 1968, local quarryman, Warren Pinfold, first proposed the idea of turning Penrith’s sand and gravel quarries into lakes at the end of their life. The companies working in the area, Boral, CSR and Hansen (Pioneer) combined their land holdings and quarrying operations in a joint venture to coordinate extraction and rehabilitation of the quarry sites. They became the Penrith Lakes Development Corporation (PLDC) in 1980. A feasibility study by PLDC showed that it was technically, environmentally and economically viable to create a series of lakes in the old quarries as part of a rehabilitation solution. PLDC began working with the NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning and the Penrith City Council in 1986 to fulfil Warren Pinfold’s vision. The NSW Government facilitated implementation of the Penrith Lakes Scheme by passing the Sydney Regional Environmental Plan No.11 under the Environment Planning and Assessment Act. The plan sets the framework for design, ongoing quarrying and future uses of the scheme. A Deed of Agreement between the Government and the PLDC defines standards for landform construction, water management, erosion control, landscaping, and dust and noise control among other things. In 1986 the Unsworth Labor Government unveiled the visionary scheme, which would see a new aquatic playground developed at Penrith for the people of Western Sydney. The new lake system would be formed as the result of quarrying operations to extract sand and gravel for Sydney’s building industry from the Cumberland floodplains, on the banks of the Nepean River at Penrith. To date, approximately 160 million tonnes of commercial sand and gravel from the Penrith Lakes site have provided around 75% of Sydney requirements. To put this in perspective, this amount of rock will be enough to fill Melbourne Cricket Ground (the largest stadium in Australia) completely – from the playing field to the top of the stands – 52 times! After more than 30 years of quarrying activities, the Scheme is moving quickly into the next phase of its life. Already major lakes and landforms have been created, land and waterways rehabilitated and breeding platypus have returned to an area where they haven’t been sighted for half a century. Biodiversity, cultural & natural heritage The Scheme is unique in its natural and cultural heritage assets. Before its commencement and throughout the life of the scheme, heritage conservation has been and remains a core element of PLDC’s use, rehabilitation and development. As a result, the Penrith Lakes Scheme area contains a number of Australia’s oldest elements of European and contact settlement outside of the Sydney colony in addition to the significant Aboriginal connection and cultural heritage dating back for thousands of years. Guiding the long-term ecological establishment of the Scheme, a Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Conservation Masterplan has been developed by PLDC, drawing upon the latest scientific research, industry best practice and advice from leading experts in relevant fields to re‐establish and sustain endangered ecological communities and in‐lake biology in a cost effective manner. Under the Masterplan, these former riparian and terrestrial vegetation communities with their representative plant and animal populations have been re‐instated. In line with NSW State Government policy some of the significant species from Western Sydney that have largely disappeared from the area have been reintroduced or encouraged to re‐establish. Rarely does an opportunity present itself at this scale to make a considerable contribution to both local and regional biodiversity conservation and support unique local wildlife, while incorporating the objectives of providing recreation and flood protection to the local community.  Water management  The Scheme has been designed to create environmentally and socially sustainable places, respect the hydrology of the Nepean River floodplain and to adopt a landscape context which reflects the natural processes and ecosystems. The scheme’s configuration has been continually modified to reflect the increased knowledge and technology since its inception in 1987, with significant improvements on the flood response performance of the Scheme, documented in the 2012 Water Management Plan (WMP). These modifications include the development of 2-way flowing weirs, allowing flood waters to enter and recede across the banks of the Scheme. The lakes are bordered with a series of flow paths and flood cells that act as an increasingly large detention system that fills the lakes simultaneously and in extreme situations allows the lakes to join. This design ensures the proposed urban lands within the Scheme are protected during a 100 year ARI event as well as retaining flood waters within the Scheme to protect surrounding developments. The Scheme also acts as a local catchment treatment system for stormwater and runoff from a surrounding peri urban catchment of some 2065 hectares, which is gravity feed through a complex series of wetlands and retention basins prior to being released via sluice gates into the major lakes contained in the Scheme. The proposed target for water quality in the recreational lakes is primary contact, as classified under the National Health and Medical Research Council (2008) recreational water quality guidelines, as prescribed by the NSW Public Health Unit. This objective has been met in the first lake open to the public, the Sydney International Regatta Centre. The Centre has achieved primary contact 95% of its operational life which commenced in 1996 and attracts almost half a million local and international visitors to the site annually.