AM I the only person who is appalled and enraged with the disclosure from Gannawarra Shire in the recent Community Update Flood Support bulletin that, after two major floods in 10 years, there are no formal management arrangements for rural levees? Was nothing learnt from the 2011 flood?
Surely risk management and prevention is better than flood relief and support after the devastating event. With so many absentee and recreational owners of riverfront properties with little to no infrastructure and no consequences should they be flooded – except the inconvenience of not being able to attend their property – something needs to be put in place to protect our valuable productive farmland from being flooded again.
The NCCMA has a waterways and floodplains officer, whom I emailed and never received a reply. That funding could be allocated to each year for its office to inspect and report on the state of the levees and work with relevant owners to maintain them, including on Crown land.
Now they state both shire and NCCMA will source out levees constructed on private land and work with them if they have the potential to adversely affect neighbouring properties. Too little, too late – neighbouring properties have already been adversely affected.
What was the definition of an “illegal levee” talked about by Geoff Rollinson, implying there are consequences for those actions, if not those constructed without a permit?
Apparently it is not creating a fortress around two entire properties that essentially reduces the area of floodplain and elevates the floodwater levels on neighbouring properties, enough that one had to quickly construct a levee that was not previously necessary. Another neighbour who already had a 2011 levee saw their house inundated and still hasn’t been able to return and may never be able to.
Even constructing a levee across a public road joining these two properties was responded to by the shire with only a ‘road closed’ sign. It also doesn’t include putting a levee across a public road leading to another person’s property while they are out shopping and upon their return can only access their residence via a gap in a fence, or digging a trench across a public road to drain floodwater from their property, denying access for other property owners to their own residences.
To date I understand there are three holes remaining in levees along the Loddon River and Barr Creek and no one is putting up their hand to fix them. One was cut to allow floodwater to drain after the event. How is it that, without management arrangements in place, some authorities are able to act as they see fit without landholder authority? They can cut a bank and let floodwater into farmland to reduce pressure on banks downstream, inundating residences and saying it is better to flood a few farmers than a whole town.
Is it because the town has formal management arrangements and someone would be liable if their banks were breached and this way nobody is able to be sued?
Who, then, is responsible for putting back the bank that they have cut? To my knowledge a lot of the breaches in 2022 were in the same spots that were breached or cut in 2011, casting shadows on the quality of their repair.
I urge everybody to send an email to local member Peter Walsh at peter.walsh@parliament.vic.gov.au to get some sort of formal levee management arrangement in place before the next flood.
Let’s make some noise and protect our farmers and rural communities.
Linda Coote
Capels Crossing
