CONCERNS over widespread flooding throughout Kerang have prompted a town meeting to raise safety issues and health risks, as residents sought reassurances action would be taken to safeguard the community.
The unprecedented storms dumped 237.5mm on Kerang from Christmas Day to January 9.
What started as a neighbourhood meeting of 10 homeowners, at the home of Thomas and Deb Findlay culminated in a town meeting at Kerang Memorial Hall on January 22, attended by more than 100 people.
Some of the issues identified as concerns were not only the inundation of houses, but also the dangers surrounding the huge amounts of water to human life and the health risks associated with raw sewerage erupting back through toilets into residences.
Sightseers were also deemed a risk as people ignored the dangerous conditions and in some cases, road closure signs.
Although the meeting was passionate, participants were respectful as representatives from the council and Goulburn-Murray Water addressed the concerns that were raised in the meeting.
Five of the district’s seven councillors were at the meeting along with senior council officers, police and emergency services representatives.
A five-hour power outage that rendered the town’s pumps inoperable on Christmas Day was on particular concern to residents.
Council is still trying to establish the circumstances of the outage with Powercor, however, it says the company has refused to communicate.
Gannawarra Shire chief executive Geoff Rollinson said there were some good points made at the meeting and great two-way communication.
“I think that the community also got a better understanding of the complexity, there is more than 56km of storm water network under Kerang and it is a fairly unique situation in that you also have a town that is surrounded by 17km of levee banks.
“The focus of this council and the previous councils, since the 2011 flood event, has been on riverine flooding and not so much storm events.
“We have been very successful in working with North Central Catchment Management, the state and federal governments in getting grants for floodplain flood mitigation.
“These recent events show that we need to swing back and find a balance to some work in the storm space.”
Over the last few years council has replaced seven of the 14 pumps throughout the network and will also look at providing some of the pumps with generators, however, this is not practical for all the pumps as they draw a lot of power and would require very large generators, according to council.
Gannawarra Shire mayor Ross Stanton said that he understood that when somebody gets flooded, they get angry and aggrieved.
“This was a really positive way to have a discussion and you are able to get somewhere when that happens, you don’t get far when people yell and scream,” Cr Stanton said.
“Geoff Rollinson has been talking about the need to focus on the need to do stuff rather than the shiny stuff, which is probably right.
“It fits in with our council policy in that we want our towns and villages to be liveable, so liveability means we need good roads and good drains and all those things that make it more liveable.”
State member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh said he thought the meeting was very constructive and the council has been able to go away with a lot more information.
“To Geoff Rollinson’s credit, the CEO, his knowledge and his history here is invaluable for the future,” Mr Walsh said.
“It is all about getting that disaster resilience funding to particularly upgrade the pumps.
“I think what they are focusing on about how you keep the water out of the main drains and send it a different way out of town is the only way forward.”
