By Adam Carey
New building controls are expected to cover properties on the Mornington Peninsula deemed vulnerable to erosion, six months after a house was destroyed and a council worker badly injured in a landslide in McCrae.
The planning controls could be in force by early next year and would set new and more stringent building standards on developers and owners of properties in erosion-prone areas.
A landslide in McCrae on the Mornington Peninsula damaged several homes on January 14.Credit: Joe Armao
Mornington Peninsula Council hopes to publicly release new mapping of its proposed erosion management overlay zones before the end of the year.
The semi-suburban council’s management of landslide risk was put under the microscope on Friday when hearings resumed in the board of inquiry into the 120-tonne landslide that hit McCrae on January 14. The inquiry is also investigating two smaller landslides that shook the same area in November 2022 and on January 5 this year.
The Age has separately sought access to council documents related to the McCrae landslides through a freedom-of-information request, but received just 11 initial inspection reports by municipal surveyors, despite being granted access in full.
Dozens of homes near the life-threatening January landslide were built with no erosion management overlay in place, despite being constructed on the side of a hill that is historically prone to landslides and known to have a number of freshwater springs.
An erosion management overlay is a planning control that dictates building activity in areas deemed prone to erosion.
The inquiry heard on Friday that the council’s strategy for managing flood and stormwater does not even reference landslide risk.
January’s landslide, which will cost Mornington Peninsula ratepayers an estimated $8 million, has spurred the council to address deficiencies in its management of landslide risk, two council directors told the inquiry.
The council’s director of assets and infrastructure, David Smith, gave evidence that the council’s latest annual budget, which was approved on Tuesday, includes funding for a project to collect updated data on landslide susceptibility.
Smith accepted under questioning that the council’s current flood and stormwater strategy makes no specific reference to landslide risk.
“I guess, in principle, by managing water and flooding you are managing the risk of landslide. However, certainly from reading it through, it doesn’t specifically call out landslides,” Smith said.
Later, the council’s manager of strategic and infrastructure planning, Katanya Barlow, said an erosion management overlay “is on the radar”, and could be put to councillors for a vote in late July or August, ahead of hoped-for approval by Victoria’s planning minister early next year.
The council’s move to impose erosion overlays across the Mornington Peninsula closely follows the same move by Yarra Ranges Council, which is rushing to place new planning controls on almost 2000 homes in the Dandenong Ranges that have recently been discovered to be in the path of a potential landslip.
Yarra Ranges Council said in urgently pursuing the interim planning controls this month that it was anxious to avoid a liability like the McCrae landslide happening on its watch.
Several McCrae home owners are still unable to return to their properties due to the ongoing risk, including one retired couple forced into temporary accommodation since the first of three landslides being investigated hit their property in November 2022.
Pensioners Paul and Denise Willigenberg hurriedly moved out their retirement home almost three years ago, when the council issued them with an emergency evacuation order.
The inquiry heard on Friday that on the same day they were evacuated, the council also gave the Willigenbergs a 48-hour deadline to submit a geotechnical report, at their own expense, confirming to the council’s satisfaction that the soil on their property was stable.
Paul Willigenberg told The Sunday Age on Saturday that he was mystified by the building order and that it compounded the stress of the ordeal.
“We didn’t understand why we’d been given the order, and we didn’t understand the terminology in terms of, are we expected to do something here?” he said.
Denise and Paul Willigenburg have been prevented from moving back into their McCrae home since November 2022.Credit: Simon Schluter
The council’s principal building surveyor, Claudio Flores, who did not issue the emergency building order, was also questioned on Friday.
He conceded that it would not have been possible for the Willigenbergs to have produced a report within such a short period and that he later told the couple they would not have to do that.
“This notice didn’t really tell Mr Willigenberg much at all, but it had a very significant impact on him and his family,” counsel assisting the inquiry, Mark Costello, KC, put to Flores.
“These are the tools that we have available to us currently under the Building Act. They’re a prescribed form and we don’t deviate from that,” Flores said of the order. “Could they be kinder and gentler in language? Yes. That’s where the explaining comes in.”
The board of inquiry was originally given a deadline of June 18 to hand its report to the Allan government, but has been given an extension until September 10. Hearings continue next week.
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