Four years after we suffered Australia’s biggest natural disaster, the CSIRO report has been released. It details how flood mitigation could make our communities safer.
It models solutions such as dry holding ponds and opening up Boundary Creek to the ocean. The CSIRO report says the 2022 flood would have been over 2m lower with these mitigation solutions in place. The 2017 flood would have been 1.4m lower which in Lismore the levee would not have over topped.
The Resilient Lands Program has failed. No new homes have been delivered after 4 years.
The buyback scheme has produced streets with half the houses gone and left the other half there to flood again. This has not made the community safer. It has not made the business community safer, yet they expect businesses to keep living through floods over and over.
It’s not IF we have another flood in our region, it’s WHEN. The CSIRO have provided a solution to keep us safe. The State and Federal Labor Governments must act on this.
When we reduce flood risk, businesses invest, insurance becomes affordable again, and families choose to stay and build their futures here. Flood mitigation is the foundation everything else in our community is built on.
This report is 4 years in the making, the solutions are not a surprise. It’s time to get to work implementing these CSIRO solutions so we never have people going through the trauma we suffered 4 years ago.
