BYRON SHIRE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA
In which property developers get access to existing rail corridor and Mullum community loses green space......
Byron Echo, 22 February 2023:
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As previously reported, the entire railway corridor length in Mullum will become either medium-density ‘affordable housing’ or car parks, under a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) dated 24 November between Council and the state government, which has a three-year expiry date.
The public were not informed of the plans until the MoU was presented as a Council agenda item. The MoU also includes Council’s ‘aspirations’ for access via the rail corridor to its land called Lot 4, enclosed by a bend in the Brunswick River.....
Note: Area 3" of "Map 2" will allegedly be "affordable housing focus". This areas coincide with the section of flood prone land chosen by Resilience NSW for landfill to accommodation emergency housing pods.
In which more flood storage is removed from the floodplain and where the direction of flood water traveling across Mullum township in a 100 ARI event is altered....
Byron Echo, 22 November 2022:
The Resilience NSW (ResNSW) Flood Report on the impact of the fill at the emergency housing site at Mullumbimby was finally released to the public on 7 November.
The report details the impacts that the fill, built up to current 1-in-100-year flood level under selected Scenario A, will have on flood levels for existing housing, in particular on Prince, Poinciana and Station Streets.
‘According to the report, there are 11 properties that will see an increase in flooding in a 1-in-100-year event, and 85 properties that will actually see a reduction in flooding in this type of event,’ said Byron Shire Mayor, Michael Lyon.
‘They might not want the fill to be removed.’
Two properties identified in the ResNSW Flood Report, with six units that were severely impacted by flooding in 2022, will see a 3cm increase of above-floor flooding as a direct result of the fill-in a 1-in-100-year flood (as labelled in 2020 by the North Byron Floodplain Management Study and Plan).
The temporary pod site will provide 40 units, for up to 160 people who were affected by the devastating February floods. However, there are key areas where the ResNSW Flood Report by BMT fails to provide adequate information on how their conclusions are drawn regarding the impact on existing houses and residents in these areas.
Local Councillor and hydrologist Duncan Dey pointed out that, ‘At 40 pages this is a very thin technical report and it has not provided the modelling and details needed to allow the public to see how they reached, or to confirm, the conclusions they have put forward. There is also no clue as to who did the actual modelling, or authored the report’.
3–6cm not a small increase
In their November Construction Update, ResNSW say that this is a ‘small increase in flood levels’. However, Cr Dey says that ‘in the profession, rises of 3cm or 6cm are not considered small’,
‘The government should accelerate the many flood mitigation options at its disposal, as described in the adopted North Byron Floodplain Risk Management Plan. That plan is a joint venture of Council and the NSW government. Work on those measures might well achieve a 3cm drop in flood levels at this and many other sites throughout the north of the Shire. Government should pursue that rapidly, before the next flood.’
Fill creates a levee
‘The flood report deals with current climate conditions only. It doesn’t deal with future flooding, which will be worse in 2050 or 2100. It doesn’t have to, because the fill is only there until the middle of this decade… or is it?
‘It looks at the 385m long fill site that runs parallel to the railway, plus an 80m northward extension as shown in Figure 4.1 of the report.
‘This fill acts as a levee bank. It totals 465m parallel to the railway and acts as a barrier to flow when the Brunswick Valley floods,’ explained Cr Dey.
‘The water flows west to east down the Brunswick Valley, that is, it flows from the Mullumbimby Showground across town towards the Industrial Estate.’
Flood velocity overlooked
The impact of the velocity, the speed that the water moves during the flood event, has not been presented in the report.
‘The reality is that these velocities have to have been modelled to obtain the water levels,’ said Cr Dey.
‘The ResNSW Flood Report contains no information about flood velocities and hence doesn’t consider their impacts. If you block a 465m width of a floodplain like this, you get still water behind the levee (on the east side) but you get a raging torrent around the two edges of the levee. By not examining velocities, government doesn’t have any picture of how they will impact Poinciana and Argyle Streets, which are the streams that the high velocity water will run down. The result could be that people who were able to get out of harm’s way under the pre-fill scenario may no longer be able to. One family escaped on 28 February by floating their kids to a neighbour’s elevated house using a kid’s three-ring pool as a life raft. Flood velocity must always be considered as well as flood depth.
‘Why were the velocities not reported and made publicly available to the community? They sit there in the computer model – it won’t run without them. We don’t know what the consultant was asked to do or report on as this has not been made public. The community is in the dark about the parameters being considered on their behalf by ResNSW.’
Long-term site?
The Mayor, Cr Lyon told residents when the report was released that there had ‘been talk of houses and other purposes here [on the fill site] for 20 years… Those conversations [regarding future removal of fill] are not for right now’, he said. However, the risk to existing houses if the fill remains long-term are significantly increased.
‘Under the state’s own Floodplain Development Manual, constructing works on a floodplain is only allowed after investigation through a proper Floodplain Study and Plan. We completed one in 2020. It doesn’t support a levee bank anywhere in the floodplain of the Brunswick River,’ explains Cr Dey.
‘As shown on Table 4 of the ResNSW Flood Report, the 100-year flood level is lowered under Scenario A for 85 properties while being raised for 11 properties. The story for rarer floods, like the 2022 flood, is far more unacceptable however, and must not be ignored, especially if the fill stays after 2025.
‘The report estimates 280mm of water above the floor level for one of the negatively impacted houses during a 1-in-100 year flood. However, they just experienced 800mm above floor level in the February 2022 flood. The report did consider the 2022 flood. Figures like Drawing 2.2 in the report indicate that a 100-year flood is 0.5m deep in Poinciana Street. However, flood marks indicate the 2022 level at half a metre higher.
‘It is likely that when the North Byron Floodplain Plan is reviewed for the 2022 flood, that review will raise the 100-year level for this area to the level experienced in February. That is an increase of half a metre above what was studied for the ResNSW Flood Report. This report has studied the wrong flood.
‘In planning law the 100-year flood is used to for setting floor heights for new constructions. When considering impacts of mitigation works, like levee banks, on existing residences, all floods should be considered, especially the floods of most concern to the people affected. In this case, that is the flood they just had.
‘The ResNSW Flood Report doesn’t consider the 2022 flood and how a repeat of that flood would behave with the fill in place.
Climate change
‘The ResNSW Flood Report ignores climate change, because it is for a two-year project, not the one the mayor is speaking about in relation to longer-term housing on the site. Climate change will make what is now the 100-year event occur more frequently. And similarly, the future 100-year flood is likely closer to the current 500-year flood.
‘For the current 500-year flood, the report shows that the fill of Scenario A (which is effectively a levee bank) lowers the flood level at 57 properties while raising it for 56 properties.
‘For the “Probable Maximum Flood”, the fill lowers flood levels at only two properties, while raising it at 52 properties. Most of those affected properties are west of the railway line, around Station Street.
‘ResNSW modelling shows a significant increase in flooding in Station Street for the 1-in-500-year flood scenario. If the fill remains long-term, these figures would be the ones that count. They show that this levee bank would be deemed unacceptable under normal scrutiny.’
The right consultant?
It is understood by The Echo that work done last decade on the North Byron Floodplain Management Study by BMT, previously known as WBM-BMT, had to be redone by a second consultant before it could be used. Byron Shire Council resolved (19-036) in February 2019 ‘that Council recognise the weakness of service provided by the consulting company which prepared the Flood Study [will] and consider that in future engagements’. So why did ResNSW choose this same consultant?
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Note: Mullumbimby Emergency Housing - Flood Impact Assessment by BMT (Official) was created for Customer: Symal Infrastructre Pty Ltd [sic]. The draft document went through six revisions between 27 October and 22 November 2022.
Symal Infrastructure Pty Ltd is a private corporation headquartered in Spotswood, Victoria, specialising in Construction, Civil construction, Building construction, Engineering, Earthworks, Plant hire, property development, and Landscaping according to its Linkedin entry. Its shareholders are listed by ASIC as: Bartolo Family Investments Pty. Ltd, R. Dando Investments Pty Ltd and Fairbairn Investments Pty Ltd.
The Mullumbimby Emergency Housing - Flood Impact Assessment has been endorsed by the NSW Perrottet Government.
Landfill area for emergency housing pods is outlined in red in this Google Earth snapshot. This landfill area will have to be extended north and west towards the Brunswick River and to the south, under the NSW Transport Asset Holding Entity (TAHE) proposal.
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The Echo, Letters, 17 November 2022:
Resilience NSW was tasked to provide emergency housing for flood refugees. Byron Council and Transport NSW provided 3–5 year short-term leases for three greenfield sites – the rail land in Prince St, Mullum, the riverbank behind the Bruns sports field, and on public open space beside the preschool in Bayside Brunswick.
Nine months later the engineers are still filling and compacting the soil – right on the riverbank in Brunswick Heads and in Prince Street with B-double trucks cruising through our towns every day, for months on end, at phenomenal, unnecessary and unwanted expense.....
Digging trenches to provide services isn’t easier with tonnes of roadbase in the way.
The roadbase is needed so cars and trucks can drive over the sites instead of parking offsite and hiring a crane to lower the pods onto the foundations.
It’s the most insensitive, inappropriate design and construction undertaken in our Green Shire, seemingly without any consultation with, approval by, or oversight from Council – the leaseholder. It must be stopped before they dump fill at Bayside Brunswick too.
After months of costly activity we still haven’t got one house, yet our caravan parks are raking in the profits on their unfilled, unimproved land sites. There is no justification or necessity for this ugly brutalist style of development in the 21st century.
Who are these experts? The professionals over-engineering with this gold-plated use of public funds? Why has no one in power queried or challenged this excessive over-development on leased land? Where are those Byron Shire councillors and directors hiding? Even the work crews are embarrassed to talk about the environmental impacts.
There are far better ways to provide accommodation for those in dire need, just ask the community for advice – we’re giving it away for free.
LISMORE CITY LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA
In which Lismore City Council becomes a local government for roads, rates and rats.....
The Echo, 2 March 2023:
NSW Planning Minister, Anthony Roberts, has removed planning powers from Lismore City Council. Councillors failed, on February 14, to constitute a local planning panel (LPP), which is designed to ‘speed up planning processes to support flood-recovery efforts’ that would have allowed them to nominate two members to the committee from a minister-approved pool of candidates.
The NSW government’s LPP usurps Council’s planning powers.
In a letter to Mayor Steve Krieg, Roberts said the failure ‘may result in confusion and uncertainty for planning processes in Lismore LGA.’
Under (s) 2.17 of the EP&A Act 1979, Roberts appointed ‘members to sit on Council’s behalf’.
All associated costs for the panel will be borne by Council, Roberts added.
Disempowering communities
Cate Faehrmann, Greens MP, planning spokesperson and lead candidate for the Upper House said, ‘The Planning Minister has a track record of disempowering communities to serve developer interests’.
‘The NSW government needs to establish a process that gives Lismore residents agency over the reconstruction process, not one that will let developers roll over the community to squeeze as much profit out of reconstruction as they can’.
‘The Lismore community has been crying out for greater transparency and control over the recovery process. Instead, the NSW Government has disempowered the community even further,’ said Ms Faehrmann.
‘The people of Lismore are anxious about how decisions are being made about the future of their city. The last thing they need is an undemocratic planning panel making decisions for them about what reconstruction is going to look like.
‘The fact that Lismore council needs to pay for the staff and facilities of the government’s sham planning panel is completely unacceptable. It’s another flagrant example of state government cost shifting which will hurt Lismore council ratepayers even more.
‘I’m calling on the government to reverse this decision and at the very least pay for the costs of this planning panel,’ she said.
Lismore needs transparency
Local councillor and Green Candidate for Lismore Adam Guise said, ‘It’s outrageous that the Liberal Planning Minister is riding roughshod over our community and sacking Lismore councillors from local planning decisions. Councillors were never consulted on this extraordinary announcement made by the Minister last year only days before Christmas.’
‘Lismore Council decided at its February meeting not to constitute a planning panel. Councillors resolved to keep our planning powers so that planning decisions are made locally with community involvement.....
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