Bundaberg flood levee project hangs in the balance of election results
Plans to build a $175 million flood levee in the heart of Bundaberg continue to be an election battleground despite no clear answer on a major spanner thrown in the works by the region’s council.
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Plans to build a $175 million flood levee in the heart of Bundaberg continue to be an election battleground despite no clear answer on who will pay for its maintenance with the region’s council continuing to say it will not be them.
Labor MP Tom Smith and LNP Bree Watson declined to definitively answer this week whether they would commit to their parties stepping into the void left by council should they win election.
The levee and its future returned to the spotlight on Friday with the Department of Housing calling for public submissions on the project.
It proposes building approximately 1.57-km levee, which will include associated floodgates, pump stations, and storage and equipment facilities.
The levee will extend along parts of Quay Street, across Saltwater Creek (Bundaberg Creek), Quay Street East, Scotland Street, Petersen Street, Cran Street, and within the Bundaberg Sugar Mill site.
The levee will reach 12m at its highest point in Saltwater Creek but will generally range from 2-4m above ground level on Quay Street East, and be even lower in other areas.
This height meets the necessary design flood elevation with an additional 300mm of clearance.
The designated area for the levee will include infrastructure such as walls, gates, floodgates, pump stations, and storage facilities, extending into surrounding tidal areas for construction and protection.
Temporary barriers may be used in specific locations during flood events, while openings will allow vehicle and pedestrian access when inactive. In the event of a flood, deployable gates will close these openings, and floodgates will discharge water into the Burnett River to reduce flooding in Bundaberg East, Bundaberg South, and the CBD.
The Bundaberg Regional Council on Friday reaffirmed its position on funding the $175m Bundaberg East flood levee project,
saying following a May 8 council meeting it would not cover maintenance costs as it would result in a 4 per cent rates rise.
Councillors agreed to only take on responsibility for the maintenance if the state government covered all costs.
On Friday Mr Smith said the project continued to be considered the number one flood mitigation “the best option we have to stop flooding throughout Bundaberg East, South, and the CBD area”.
“Over the last number of weeks, I have met with locals who were displaced from their homes for up to 12 months following the impact of the 2013 floods.
“This levee will not only make a difference to saving properties but to protecting lives.”
Mr Smith said he would be happy to sit down with the Bundaberg Regional Council and discuss costs after the election.
“At the end of the day this levee protects a lot of council infrastructure, be it roads, be it buildings as well as a lot of our state infrastructure, including our schools,” Mr Smith said.
Ms Watson said she government needed to “work with, not against, the Bundaberg Regional Council to deliver flood resilience” but stopped short of committing support for the state to fund the maintenance costs.
“The MID (Ministerial Infrastructure Design) may be able to shed light on the proposed maintenance costs, we haven’t seen these so it would be irresponsible to say we can fund them when we haven’t been told what they are, it is also unfair to expect council to fund these ongoing costs,” she said.
“As someone who was here volunteering at the North Bundaberg evacuation centre during the floods, and witnessed first-hand Australia’s largest air evacuation, flood resilience is too important not to get right.”
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Originally published as Bundaberg flood levee project hangs in the balance of election results
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