Kinchant Dam road completely isolates town during flood, sparking new calls for upgrade

Kinchant Dam residents are tired of flood waters completely isolating their town for another weekend. But is the fix just too expensive?

Road closures isolated the small town of Kinchant Dam for almost a week during the heavy monsoonal rains in early February

Monsoonal rains across Mackay have resurfaced a long standing dispute as flooded roads cut a cane town’s only exits leaving them completely isolated.

Around 528mm of rain lashing Kinchant Dam in the first week of February was enough to cut off both of the town’s exits, Kinchant Dam road and Marian Eton road, leaving more than 200 of its residents stranded.

Local resident Tracey Smith who works as a butcher in Mackay says she was stranded for a whole weekend and unable to go to work due to the road closures.

“Every time we have more than 200mm our road gets cut off, we get isolated,” she said.

“This time it happened on Friday and we were isolated on the weekend.

“There’s no other way out.”

Antoneys Crossing along Kinchant Dam road has been the subject of controversy for more than a decade.

Water released from the dam as a precautionary measure during heavy rainfall has regularly flooded the crossing.

The slow and constant release from the dam means Antoneys Crossing can be submerged for days on end.

Bill Ruffell at Antoneys Crossing

According to locals, the crossing had once been blocked off for 11 days, turning a three minute drive to the neighbouring town of Eton into a 45 minute drive.

Eton North State School, located a few hundred metres from the crossing, began classes without some pupils last week due to the road closures.

“Last week, a number of students were unable to attend school due to ongoing rainfall that impacted roadways. The duration and number of affected students varied across different days,” a spokesperson for the Department of Education said.

“There were impacts to many school bus services last week due to localised flooding and road closures.”

Ms Smith says she isn’t seeing the Mackay Regional Council prioritising the road.

“They’re upgrading the park next to North Eton school, but no one can get to it because the road’s flooded.”

North Eton Community Park playground is being renovated

Long time campaigner and local truck driver Bill Ruffell says as long as Greg Williamson is the mayor, nothing will be done to improve the crossing.

With concerns that emergency services couldn’t access the growing town during floods, Mr Ruffell has been petitioned the Mackay council to increase the number of culverts from four to at least 7 in 2011.

“A lot of people don’t realise how much time and money I’ve spent on this,” he said.

After conducting “extensive investigations and studies”, the Mackay Regional Council says the crossing is unfixable and that emergency notification processes ensure residents are always made aware of the incoming floods.

“Localised culvert upgrading provides no benefit to road inundation without significant upgrading of the downstream channel and more extensive raising of the road,” said Greg Williamson.

“It is just not feasible economically at this location.”

Mr Ruffell said the council came to him with an estimate of around $9m to solve the flooding issue, which involved cleaning out the creek and installing the downstream channel.

Council estimates from 2013 show the cost of upgrades to the downstream channel as $9.8m, but that didn’t include construction costs to raise the bridge.

It is unclear what they would cost in 2025.

But Mr Ruffell he believes a few extra culverts could be the difference between being stranded for one week at a time to having the road closed for a day.

“It’s like turning the tap only half on, you only get half the flow,” he said.

“You put more culverts on you’d have the tap full on.”