Wollongong is particularly vulnerable to flash flooding, more so than most other Australian cities.
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The escarpment acts as a catch-all chute, sending rainwater downhill where it sweeps up debris as it sluices through the hillside suburbs before colliding with a remarkably effective dam wall in the form of the railway-freeway embankment.
You’d call it a perfect storm, were it not assisted by poor decisions in the past.
As the 20th anniversary of the devastating 1998 floods arrives, Wollongong City Council said it has spent more than $40 million since 1998 on flood mitigation works. And while it seems ridiculous to be talking about flooding during a drought, proper planning must think years out. But are we, and our council, doing enough?
Some land has been bought back, floodplain studies done, and importantly, debris control structures have been set up to stop some of the more vulnerable drains becoming blocked in a downpour.
But $40 million in 20 years is just $2 million a year – hardly top shelf stuff.
In 2014 Mayor Gordon Bradbery declared flooding and stormwater spending was “vastly inadequate” and flooding was “a huge problem we’ve got to somehow or other get out head around”.
That has not happened quickly, even while many homes and businesses in southern Wollongong are flooded every time there is a major storm – when they didn’t flood in 1998.
Too many flood studies and accompanying action plans are still incomplete. And because the council’s system for modelling flood risks was based on a faulty method of calculating drain blockage, the studies that were complete must all be done again, at ratepayer expense.
There has not been a massive injection or money or effort. Stormwater management is planned to receive roughly the same amount of funding from the council for each of the next three years. It doesn’t reek of an organisation tackling a “huge problem”.
We saw a nice debris control structure on Wednesday in Balgownie. It’s almost finished. It ought to be: it’s been 20 years.
Of course flooding can’t be prevented. But now we understand its power, shouldn’t we make this a bit more urgent?
