In July 2022 Engineers Australia held a risk seminar at Southern Cross University. It wasn’t long after the floods so naturally the floods came up in panel discussions. An audience member suggested we needed large basins to capture the water to reduce flooding in Lismore. Not one of the engineers on the panel wanted to discuss this because they thought the idea wasn’t worth discussing.

After four years of work, the CSIRO has come to the conclusion that multiple water detentions (dams), in the upper reaches of the catchments in the Northern Rivers, along with other flood mitigation engineering, could reduce future catastrophic flooding impacts in Lismore and elsewhere by as much as 2 metres.

Once again, our Northern Rivers communities have been let down by a less than transparent ‘consultation’ process.