Desperate to eliminate all discussion of climate change from the public debate ahead of the federal election campaign, the Morrison Government has given the nod for the CSIRO to be granted est. $10 million dollars via the federal National Recovery and Resilience Agency (NRRA) to study how to manage floodwater within the Wilson and Richmond river catchments with definitely no mention of funding for national, state or regional mitigation measures to tackle for the root cause of extreme flooding events - climate change.
The Coordinator General of the NRRA, Shane Stone, is reported as stating that flood management study is expected to take up to two years.
Predictably, National Party-supported Lismore Mayor Steven Krieg blindly echoes this pre-empting of the CSIRO's study report while on the same breath assuring the region that is not what he is doing.
This bold pre-emptive statement hides a multitude of misconceptions about the function of a dam, because the primary function of a dam can be water sustainability/storage or flood mitigation.
Water sustainability/storage requires a dam to be constantly around 90 per cent capacity to fully meet its primary function and to justify the many millions spent on its construction and ongoing maintenance.
Flood mitigation requires a dam to always be almost empty and every time its water level rises significantly that water needs to be released back into the river system that feeds it in order to maintain flood mitigation capacity.
Trying to combine both functions in the same dam on a floodplain would require an enormous, over-designed dam built at prohibitive financial and environmental cost. A constant looming presence in the landscape likely to give downstream farmers and homeowners more than a few troubled nights.
And let's face it, there is actual income to be made out of water storage dams not empty dams, so the temptation for a gradual shift in purpose from flood mitigation to water sustainability/storage would be there from the very beginning - with the potential for lethal consequences during mega floods or a multiple flood year in the catchment when there is insufficient capacity remaining to retain all the floodwater reaching such a repurposed dam.
There is already renewed talk of damming and diverting water from NSW coastal rivers inland or across the NSW-Qld border and it appears that nothing would please the Perrottet Government more than finding an excuse for inter-catchment water transfer to satisfy the needs of rapacious councils, property developers and irrigators outside of the Northern Rivers region, as well as the wants of that unhealthy coterie of political donors/dodgy water traders.
This motley collection of National Party ideologues and mindless political agitators need to stop acting as a wrecking ball and build on local knowledge and expertise in order to genuinely assess all the solutions being offered up Lismore and the Northern Rivers region.
BACKGROUND
There are thirty-six signatories to this document sponsored by the Climate Council of Australia.
MARCH 2022 Statement From A... by clarencegirl
Council Magazine, 7 March 2022:
The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) has called for a targeted $200 million per year disaster mitigation fund, for local governments to address the impacts of climate change and help increase Australia’s resiliency.
ALGA President, Linda Scott, said the Association is seeking the disaster mitigation fund as well as an extra $200 million over four years for a Local Government Climate Response Partnership Fund.
“In 2014, the Productivity Commission recommended increased investment in disaster mitigation, but currently less than five per cent of disaster funding in Australia goes towards mitigation and community resilience measures,” Cr Scott said.
“We appreciate the support that has quickly been provided by states and the Commonwealth to households and communities impacted by these devastating floods in Queensland and New South Wales.
“However, we need greater investment in disaster mitigation and climate change adaptation to reduce the severity and impact of future natural disasters.
“The current legislation allows for $200 million per year to be spent from the Federal Government’s $4.8 billion Emergency Management Fund.
“However, since 2019 the Government has only committed $150 million in total from this fund.
“This month’s Federal Budget is an opportunity for the Commonwealth to provide additional assistance that will help protect our communities from increasing disaster events.
“Investing in mitigation makes economic sense, and significantly reduces the costs governments incur during recovery.”
Cr Scott said ALGA is also advocating for a Local Government Climate Response Partnership Fund of $200 million over four years to help councils address the impacts of climate change in their communities.
“Across our nation, we are seeing floods and fires that are more severe, and more destructive,” Cr Scott said.
“Providing our councils with funding to address the impacts of climate change in our communities will help us increase our resilience to future natural disasters.”
The Guardian, 23 March 2022:
Lismore council has been gripped by in-fighting over whether it should make references to “climate change” following the flood disaster and a decision to pause its work on flood mitigation despite warnings the “optics” of doing so were “not good”.
The disaster-ravaged town is still in the early stages of recovering from an unprecedented 14.4-metre flood, which wiped out thousands of homes and businesses and brought Lismore to its knees.
On Tuesday, in a late-night sitting, Lismore council proposed a message of thanks to volunteers and the community for their efforts in the immediate response and clean-up effort.
It included a line saying the council “acknowledges we are likely to experience further disasters of this nature as climate change continues to escalate”.
The words “climate change” prompted a reaction from four councillors, led by independent councillor Big Rob, who attempted to have the reference removed and replaced with a line saying “we are definitely going to experience further disasters of this nature”.
Rob – who says he does not deny climate change but likes to “stir up lefties” – said he did not think a message of community support was the right place to make “political” statements about climate change.
“That motion was about thanking people, not being political about climate change,” he said…….
The effort to delete the reference to climate change failed. But it rankled other councillors, including Greens councillor Adam Guise, who first proposed the climate change reference be added.
“They tried to couch it as not politicising it,” Guise said . “But this is the whole thing about climate change, it’s not political, it’s science.”
The dispute came amid further divisions within council over a decision to halt the work of a key committee working to improve flood mitigation measures in Lismore.
That occurred despite councillors acknowledging the “optics” of pausing the flood mitigation committee so soon after a disaster were “not good”.
The council has also sacked members of the Lismore community who were on a community reference group advising council on flood mitigation.
On Tuesday, at 11pm, the council decided to pause the work of the floodplain committee to wait for more information from CSIRO, which has been given $10m to explore flood mitigation measures in the region.
Lismore council decided it should hold off doing any further work on flood mitigation of its own until it understood what CSIRO was doing.
But councillor Vanessa Ekins, who chairs the committee, warned that could take months. She said pausing the committee was “very dangerous ground” and would not look good to Lismore residents.
“We have just been through a big flood, we are still experiencing that and for us to send a message out there that we are pausing work that we have been working really hard on for years until we hear what the CSIRO are doing … they might take six months to tell us what they’re doing,” she said.
“This could take a really, really long time and meanwhile our community has no guidance from us, we’re not doing anything, we’ve paused the consultation we’re currently engaged in until someone else tells us what they’re doing.”
She said the decision was “absolutely outrageous”.
“It’s really important that our flood plain committee continues the work that it’s been doing for the last five years on mitigating the impacts of flooding on the CBD and residences,” she said. “We were in the middle of a consultation process with members of the community about various options.”
Others were furious that community members had been sacked from the committee so soon after the floods.
“We had community members on that committee with five years’ experience and expertise in understanding the mitigation options that were before us,” councillor Elly Bird said. “To throw all of that experience away, I don’t support it.”
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