By Clay Lucas
A retirement village on land next to the Maribyrnong River in Avondale Heights that flooded last year was built a metre too low, after Melbourne Water removed flooding rules designed to discourage building on the site.
New data presented at an inquiry conducted by Melbourne Water into its own potential failures in last October’s Maribyrnong floods indicates the height at which Rivervue Retirement Village was meant to be built. The data also shows the expected level at which the village would flood.
But inquiry chair Tony Pagone, a former Federal Court and Supreme Court judge, said the documents showed it was unclear why the buildings flooded if they were built at the height agreed to by Melbourne Water, when it removed a flood overlay on the land.
“It seems from these documents that the properties ought not to have flooded. But they did,” Pagone told Melbourne Water chief executive Nerina Di Lorenzo on the first day of a public hearing in July. “It would be useful to us to understand whether there was an error somewhere.”
Pagone declined to make public the four pages of technical data presented to Di Lorenzo at the hearings when approached by The Age. Melbourne Water released them on request last week.
The data details the level of the land relative to the river in 2005, when developers first applied to build a retirement village. The documents also detail what was actually built on the land from 2012.
Rivervue Retirement Village in Avondale Heights.Credit: Rivervue
Rivervue, which is on Canning Street in Avondale Heights, is owned by millionaire David Thurin.
In 2015, Melbourne Water approved Thurin’s request to remove planning rules from riverside land that for decades was deemed prone to flooding.
A 2015 letter from Melbourne Water to Thurin’s planning consultants, BMDA Development Advisory, was released to The Age under freedom of information and shows the water authority agreed that retirement units proposed near the river would no longer be “affected by the Land Subject to Inundation Overlay”.
These units were built on that land, which flooded last year. Had Melbourne Water left the overlay in place, almost none of these 47 high-end villas would have been allowed to be built without significant earthworks to raise their floor levels.
Asked if this stage of Rivervue was built according to plan, a spokesman for the retirement village said it had been “developed according to the approved permits and planning controls” and that these had been “reviewed by Melbourne Water”.
A Melbourne Water spokesman said last October’s flood “did not behave as expected – with Rivervue experiencing more flooding than predicted”.
He said a range of planning decisions had resulted in floor heights at the village being reduced and that its investigation into what had occurred was continuing.
As part of this investigation, Pagone’s inquiry will visit Rivervue on Tuesday “to provide a first-hand sense of the impact of the flood on the village”, an email on Friday to residents said.
The flooding at Rivervue Retirement Village last October.Credit: Rivervue
Premier Daniel Andrews ordered Melbourne Water’s investigation into the floods, which caused tens of millions of dollars of damage to properties after the Maribyrnong swelled dramatically.
Pagone became chair of the inquiry after The Age revealed the perceived conflict of interest the former chair, planning expert Nick Wimbush, had over Rivervue.
Wimbush led a planning inquiry in 2015 that allowed the flood overlay on the Rivervue land to be removed. The Age’s reporting also led to a separate state parliament inquiry into the floods.
Critics of Melbourne Water’s investigation say the severity of flood damage – including more than $7 million at Rivervue – is the result of its own poor planning decisions.
Hydrologist Geoff Crapper is among the most vocal and well-qualified critics of Melbourne Water and its role in exacerbating last year’s floods. He worked at Melbourne Water and its predecessor, the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works, for 31 years until 2003.
In his submission to the parliamentary inquiry, Crapper said part of Rivervue now sat in a flood plain and that something needed to be done to help the residents who unwittingly bought homes prone to inundation as a direct result of Melbourne Water’s planning changes.
“The extent of the flooding at Rivervue Retirement Village on October 2022 has shown beyond doubt that upwards of 50 villas are located on an active floodplain and subject to flooding.”
In a separate submission, Moonee Valley council pointed out that Melbourne Water altered the flood zoning of the Rivervue site after a request from the developer.
“Melbourne Water altered the flooding profile of the site. During the October 2022 flood, 47 properties at this site were flooded despite no indication from Melbourne Water this would occur.”
Ron Sutherland is a former Melbourne Water civil engineer who managed land development on projects such as Rivervue for 12 of his 20 years at the authority.
He said part of the reason Melbourne Water removed the village’s flood overlay was because the developer said it had built what it called a “flood retarding basin” – ponds on the banks of the Maribyrnong.
“It’s not a flood retarding basin. They are duck ponds. They will make zero difference to flooding,” he said.
Rivervue Retirement Village’s flooded pool last October.Credit: Rivervue
Rivervue’s Thurin is now in a Supreme Court dispute with the companies that built the retirement village, Glenvill Homes and earthworks company CSC Civil.
Thurin and his wife, Lisa, daughter of billionaire developer John Gandel, have their own ongoing building dispute, relating to their $10 million Toorak home. In that court case, they are suing the builder of their home for $3.6 million over construction issues; the case is cited in court documents that were lodged in Thurin’s action against Glenvill and CSC.
The Age contacted Glenvill, which did not respond, while CSC said it would not comment on the court case.
A Rivervue spokesman declined to explain why Rivervue was suing the builder and earthworks company.
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