On the northern side of the Clarence River estuary, the little coastal village of Iluka is battling poor urban planning and an inadequate drainage network in a changing regional climate

Clarence Environment Centre, Winter newsletter – 2022, excerpt:

Who could have predicted that?

They have to be kidding!

The overworked phrase, “who could have seen this coming”, has been used by all levels of government to excuse the debacle which was the response to the recent flooding event across the Northern Rivers, and has been rightly ridiculed.

For 40 years, the world’s scientific community, through the UN, has been warning us that the changing climate will generate more frequent and more extreme weather events, and have begged the world’s governments to take appropriate action, with little success.

The failure of those governments to make meaningful attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is inexcusable. However, to fail to plan for those forecast catastrophic weather events, verges on criminal neglect. The recent flooding saw lives and property lost, businesses forced to close, and rendered thousands homeless.

In the Clarence Valley, the response to 4 decades of warnings about the inevitability of increased flooding. has been zero, something that even this latest disaster seems unlikely to change.

In fact, Council’s first act when reviewing the cause of ponding in some areas in Iluka, was to examine past rainfall data, leading to the hardly surprising conclusion that: “The significant rainfall has led to a saturated catchment and high-water table, exacerbating the time taken for water to disperse”.

Council’s statement continues with: “There has been no event or combination of events since records began that comes close to the rainfall totals recorded at Yamba”, going on to say: “We need to be aware that the most efficiently designed drainage systems are not built to cope with rainfall totals equal to that recently experienced”.

Ponding problems in Iluka from recent rains will only worsen with the clearing of forested land and replacing it with roof-tops, concrete and bitumen

Having had over 40 years to plan for just such an event, we have to ask, why haven’t adequate drainage systems been designed, and required to be installed in all new developments?

Alongside one of Iluka’s ponding problem areas, a 140-lot subdivision is currently converting 14ha of bushland into roofs, concrete and bitumen, all combining to channel rainfall, at speed, through an inadequate stormwater system, directly into those ponding hotspots.

The above image was of the condition of that housing development after the water had subsided. Laughingly advertised as “Birrigan Iluka Beach”, despite being nowhere near the waterfront, it has already changed water flows beginning with the removal of the forest which has led to the unprecedented ponding, prompting this Facebook comment (see right). 

Council should be taking its “Climate Emergency” declaration seriously, and plan accordingly, but they aren’t, with multiple floodplain developments underway or in the planning stages in Iluka and Yamba.

Interesting time ahead!