More justification of this adage has arrived with Nationals’ MP Kevin Hogan’s response to the next level stupidity known as the final report of the Northern Rivers Resilience Initiative (NRRI).
Following the 2022 Lismore floods, the CSIRO was engaged by NEMA, the National Emergency Management Agency, at the behest of the then Morrison Coalition government, to embark on the NRRI. This project continued under Labor.
Four years and over $11 million later, those involved have concluded that a series of ten massive detention dams in the upper reaches of the Richmond catchment – along with other mitigation works to be built across sensitive environmental and agricultural areas – might, in the best case scenario, reduce a future Lismore flood by up to two metres. Napkin calculations suggest that this mega-boondoggle could be built for the extremely optimistic price tag of $2 billion.
The federal member for Page, Kevin Hogan, says $2 billion makes sense because it’s a lot less than the $15 billion cost of the 2022 Lismore floods. There are a few problems with this, beginning with the most obvious: climate change accelerated floods of the future are likely to be worse than those of the past. Does delaying movement off the flood plain make any sense?
While the cost of flood damage is shared with insurance companies and individuals, government is being asked to pick up the entire tab for mitigation. Is it fair to expect the rest of the state and country to pay for Lismore being built in the wrong place?
Um, what about…
Even if this ridiculous plan could somehow be funded and built before the next major flood event, the CSIRO admits than even the massive mitigation works proposed wouldn’t stop Lismore flooding catastrophically.
And there are other issues. How will landowners be compensated for dam construction and new upstream flooding issues? Where are inundated plants and animals supposed to go?
Who would decide when to empty these temporary dams, in the event of ongoing heavy rain? Who would clean out trapped flood debris and monitor dam wall integrity? Who would take responsibility for blackwater events when the dams were emptied, and for increased landslide risks caused by short or long term holding ponds?
Supposedly these questions will be answered by spending another $3 million on further flood resilience planning across the catchment (already committed by the Minns and Albanese governments) but when the NRRI idea is proven uneconomic and scientifically loopy, the Richmond region will simply be that much closer to the next flooding disaster and even further from a real solution.
Meanwhile the National Party aligned Lismore Council is moving Council assets and operations back down to the Wilsons River, to help prop up local business interests, while proposing to sell off its own safety net in flood-safe Goonellabah.
The NRRI is essentially the old Lismore levee idea on steroids; an expensive, short term fantasy of controlling nature which creates false hope and is doomed to fail.
Deja vu all over again
It would be nice if Australia could remember its own history, instead of following the likes of Barnaby Joyce, who once said ‘Water is wealth and a dam is a bank.’
The National Party’s obsession with dams and concrete dates back at least to the Bradfield Scheme, with drought and flood-proofing fantasies always untethered to Australian realities. The recent Urannah and Dungowan Dam proposals come to mind.
Just to our north, the Wivenhoe Dam was touted by Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen as a permanent solution to Brisbane’s flooding and water supply woes, following 16 deaths in 1974. It worked for a time, but later led to over 6,500 victims of various kinds having to be compensated in the legal settlement following serious flooding in 2011.
Lismore could also learn from Gundagai, another NSW town situated in an obviously flood-prone area, which took multiple floods, the deaths of 91 people and the destruction of half the town before the government finally took the advice of the people who had been living there for thousands of years and moved the settlement up the hill.
The Widjabul/Bundjalung name for Lismore translates as swampland. Sooner or later, politicians of all stripes will have to face facts and learn to live with nature, or get out of the way. The solutions to increasingly severe flooding will not be found in Nationals’ pipe dreams.
For those who don’t have work commitments, there will be a community consultation session about the NRRI flood mitigation plans this Wednesday morning (22 July) from 9am-11am at the Lismore Workers Club.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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