Flood levee funding call: Councils redouble efforts to protect towns

Regional councils are calling on the Federal Government to roll out more flood levee funding, as they scramble to secure towns.

Numurkah locals are hoping they don’t get a repeat of the 2012 floods that swept into town, as levees have still not been built to protect their homes.

Regional councils are scrambling to upgrade and check flood levees along swollen rivers, in response to a triple whammy of wet weather systems – a strong positive southern annular mode and Indian Ocean Dipole, plus another La Nina.

Wangaratta Council Mayor Dean Rees said council signed off on a $5.3 million upgrade of the rural city’s levees, appointing a contractor last week to raise them by up to 600mm to mitigate flood risks from the King and Ovens Rivers.

“We’ve had breaches of levees in the past and this will give us greater security,” Mr Rees said.

Further west Gannawarra Shire infrastructure and development director Geoff Rollinson said council officers had undertaken a special “level two inspection” of all levees, shutoff gates and storm water pumps, given the seasonal outlook.

He said Quambatook had a decent levee in place to protect it from Avoca River floods, while the temporary levee along 3km of the Murray Valley Hwy near Kerang had been made permanent as part of a 17km ring that protected the town from Loddon River floods.

Mr Rollinson said council had also gained state and federal funding to investigate deficiencies in the Koondrook-Barham levee.

But he said council would need far more money to then design and commission upgrades.

“I’d urge the Federal Government to help and support all those communities living on flood plains,” he said.

Communities across NSW and Victoria are hopeful more funds will be rolled out to build and upgrade levees, given Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to free up spending of the former Morrison Government’s $4.7 billion Emergency Disaster Fund.

Mr Albanese said Labor would release up to $200 million annually for disaster prevention and resilience, “such as flood levees, sea walls, cyclone shelters, evacuation centres, fire breaks and telecommunications improvements.”

Legislation is due to be put to Parliament this week to rebrand the ERF as the Disaster Ready Fund, with funding available from July 1 next year.

Meanwhile in Numurkah, where 100 homes were flooded by the Broken Creek in the 2012 floods, the outgoing Morrison Government locked in $2.38 million to start work on stage one of the town’s flood mitigation works – the northern levee.

Numurkah Flood Implementation Committee member Ray Thorton said the yet to be funded stage two of the works – the southern levee – was the most critical as it would protected about 80 homes.

A local street during the Numurkah flood.

All three stages of the Numurkah works will cover 9km of levees and cost close to $20m.

VICSES chief executive Tim Wiebusch urged regional Victorians to check their local flood guides on the SES website.

He said the SES was working with their NSW counterparts on the Murray and had cranked up their communications strategy, especially with so many new tree changers moving into regional areas, where they may know little about local floddo risks.

“A lot of people listen out for when the flood will peak, while not really knowing a road can go under well before that peak,” Mr Wiebusch said.

“Driving through floodwater can be the last decision you make.”