Flood risk plan put on pause

The issues raised at the meeting focused on the 2024 Echuca Moama Flood Study, which laid the foundations for the Flood Risk Management Plan to be modelled.

Community representative for Murray River Council's flood plain risk management committee Matthew O’Farrell addressed the council during the meeting.

Mr O’Farrell is no stranger to the world of flood risk, having commissioned four different site-specific flood studies and two flood risk assessment reports.

He has also worked as a strategy, policy and performance manager at Goulburn Murray Water, which included managing risk for the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District.

Mr O’Farrell said for the average person, the flood study could be difficult to understand, but it could have major impacts on communities.

“This is really complex stuff, it’s a 300-page report, it gets given to... laypeople to assess, but it’s really challenging. So what’s it all mean?” he said.

“Essentially, it’s just the risk matrix... all those beautiful charts and hundreds of pages and all that, it just comes down to the risk matrix, but this particular risk matrix is much more consequential than most.

“It acts as a strategic foundational document for the next 25 to 30 years for a whole range of end users.

“All of these end users can have serious impacts on our community and especially regional and economic growth prospects as well.”

The flood study and flood risk management plan are used by a range of different people and industries to calculate risk.

This includes town planning for local and state government, infrastructure standards and requirements for the community like the town levee upgrade, emergency services planning and resourcing.

The findings are also used in the insurance industry to determine risk profiles, which in turn affects mortgage lending and land valuing.

Mr O’Farrell said the flood study had been “a trouble project” since it first kicked off in 2017.

A final report was delivered in September 2022, a month before the October 2022 floods.

Following the floods, it became clear that the model had major predictive flaws, and so the 2022 Flood Study was updated to reflect real-world events.

Despite the update, Mr O’Farrell said there were still some major issues, such as the lack of an independent peer review.

“What you see (on the flood study), is essentially the same name for the last five years,” he said.

“Good governance does not look like someone marking their own exam for five years.

“They said it had been peer-reviewed but...I couldn’t find any information on who did it and whether they were independent.”

He was also concerned about the study not mentioning probable maximum flood levels, a measure used in all NSW planning guides for regulations and housing strategies for residents.

Mr O’Farrell asked council to consider addressing these issues before finalising the Draft Flood Risk Management Plan.

Following on from Mr O’Farrell, Murray River Council project manager Matthew Sherman addressed a few of the concerns that were raised.

Mr Sherman acknowledged that while there had not been an external independent review, it had been internally reviewed by departments such as the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water.

He also noted that in the 2024 Flood Study, probable maximum flood is written as ‘extreme event’ instead.

Considering the addresses given by both Mr O’Farrell and Mr Sherman, council voted against the adoption of the Draft Flood Risk Management Plan.

Councillors agreed that there was a need for better understanding of the flood study and the Draft Flood Risk Management Plan before they pushed the plan through.

The councillors then unanimously voted to pause the adoption of the plan for the purpose of seeking an independent review by a qualified person with local knowledge.

Cr Gen Campbell noted that to make sense of discrepancies in the Flood Risk Management Plan, a look into the 2024 Flood Study was also needed.