FAQs - Community Engagement
Our Approach
How are you engaging with the community?
Sydney Water values community and stakeholder relationships and prioritises genuine engagement and collaboration throughout the lifecycle of our projects.
One of our key core values is to have the customer at the heart. This means that customer and community needs are always sought and considered and communication is done in ways that suit them.
Our engagement approach is in line with the International Association for Public Participation’s (IAP2) Spectrum of Public Participation. It defines best practice for community and stakeholder engagement and helps to establish the role of community and other stakeholders in the engagement process and their impact on the decision-making outcomes of a project.
A Community and Stakeholder Engagement Plan (CSEP) has been developed by Sydney Water for this project, which has been approved by the NSW Department of Planning and Environment. It articulates our strategic approach to community and stakeholder engagement during the detailed design and construction phases. The level of engagement will vary depending on the project phase and stakeholder influence/impact.
We began community and stakeholder engagement for this project as early as December 2019. This included doorknocks, community info sessions (in person and online), meetings, workshops, newsletters and social media. We’ve also spoken to NSW and Commonwealth government agencies, councils, interest groups, local communities (including culturally and racially marginalised groups), and directly impacted landowners. This input has informed and influenced the project. You can find more information about previous engagement on this webpage.
As we get ready for construction to begin, we’re speaking with directly affected landowners and interested stakeholder organisations about the detailed design.
Indigenous and CALD Engagement
Are you consulting with Aboriginal organisations, traditional owners and Elders?
For First Nations stakeholders such as the Darug and Dharawal Traditional Custodians and the Deerubbin Local Aboriginal Land Council, Sydney Water aligns its engagement with the Recognise Country Guidelines.
This helps us ensure our engagement with these important stakeholders is respectful and done in a way that allows time for listening and the sharing of ideas and stories that may influence the design, construction and operation of the AWRC facility and surrounding landscape.
To formally document our approach, we are preparing an engagement plan for First Nations peoples. The plan will build on the information included in the project’s Community and Stakeholder Engagement Plan (CSEP) and will include:
• First Nations peoples and groups connected to or affected by the project and its location
• objectives of participation, proposed actions and measures of success
• monitoring, reporting and reviewing.
We are also committed to implementing policies and procedures to provide employment, supplier and other participation opportunities to First Nations workers and businesses in line with Sydney Water’s Reconciliation Action Plan 2021-2023. We will leverage John Holland’s relationships with community focused organisations to engage with young First Nations people throughout the duration of the project. Utilising memberships with Supply Nation and chambers of commerce will help us engage and build the capability of local Aboriginal owned businesses.
Consultation and engagement will underpin the success of achieving our First Nations participation outcomes. We understand that to deliver on these outcomes, we must take a proactive approach to connecting with local Traditional Owner representatives, key stakeholders within the community and other First Nations organisations and corporations.
We’re formally engaging with Registered Aboriginal Parties (RAPs) and other interested parties in heritage salvage work in the early stages of the project. We are also looking for opportunities to work with local knowledge holders to shape this project and explore ways to connect it with the rich heritage of the impacted land.
How are you engaging with Culturally and Racially Maginalised (CARM) communities?
The pipelines for this project will traverse though some of the most culturally diverse communities in Sydney.
Language barriers, potential distrust of government organisations and challenges related to living in a different country with different laws and cultural expectations may reduce some people’s opportunity to connect with or understand the construction that is happening where they live or work.
To address this, we use language translation panels and the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National) in our communication material. We also make efforts to involve Culturally and Racially Marginalised communities through face-to-face opportunities, including door-knocking, targeted community events (such as the including the Cabramatta Lunar New Year Festival) and drop-in community information sessions. These activities provide an effective way for the project team to meet and understand a person’s cultural background and needs.
During the project’s planning phase, we held three online community information sessions, in Arabic, Vietnamese and Chinese, to help the local community get an update on the project, ask questions, and tell us their feedback.
During the EIS phase, we also created a simplified brochure in the same three languages to further enable community members to provide their feedback. You can find these brochures in the Related Documents section of this webpage.