3.5.4 Sociocultural assets

Of the 19 sociocultural assets identified as water-dependent, for which spatial information was available, the ‘Washpool – locally significant heritage site’ in the Karuah River, north of the town site of Washpool (Figure 49), is the only one in the zone of potential hydrological change. This asset fell within the ‘Cultural’ subgroup and ‘Heritage site’ class of assets and was originally nominated by the Gloucester Shire Council owing to its history as a site where sheep were shorn and washed during the early period of settlement within the area. Its polygon intersects 40 m of the ‘Perennial – high gradient bedrock confined streams’ landscape class for which no qualitative or receptor impact model was developed. Surface water modelling results found no significant change (defined in Section 3.3. 1.2, Table 5) in annual flow (AF) or high-flow days (FD) in the reaches immediately upstream or downstream of the Washpool (Figure 19 and Figure 22 in Section 3.3). There were potentially small increases (95% chance that any increase is less than 3 days) in the number of low-flow days per year (LFD) immediately upstream of the Washpool (Figure 16 in Section 3 .3), but not at the nearest downstream node. Based on these small hydrological changes, any change in water level at the Washpool is unlikely to impact the social amenity provided by the Washpool.

Fifteen indigenous assets were included in the sociocultural asset register. These included 11 assets for which locations were not provided. Based on the association of these assets with marine and estuarine environments, it is unlikely that these assets would be impacted. Information on indigenous water assets is also available in the Aboriginal Cultural Water Values – Gloucester subregion report (Constable and Love, 2015).