Raising Wyangala Dam wall is a must
OpEd first appeared in The Daily Telegraph, 18 November 2022
When we’re in drought we talk about dams.
When we have flooding, we talk about dams.
When things are going well, it’s all forgotten.
It’s a cycle repeated in Australia year in, year out. But no-one in the regions forgets, even when conditions are perfect.
It’s impossible to forget the sight of a rural community struck by grief as one of their own is pulled from the water.
It’s impossible to forget the fear on the faces of those in the middle of an emergency evacuation.
For years to come, the sound of heavy rain will scare them, when years ago it was the sound for which they prayed.
At Eugowra, swamped by a wave of Biblical proportions from the Mandagery Creek on Monday morning, the town now resembles a war zone.
Almost all of the houses are damaged … or destroyed. Some have been moved from their foundations by as much as 800 metres.
The scenes are confronting. Power poles bent sideways. Huge, ancient trees uprooted and swept away. Several cars, some of them brand new, all upended in a gully, having been washed down the street.
One resident joked she’d now be up for more rent because her house on the outskirts of town was now in a central location.
Another quipped she hoped the price of canola was good this harvest because they’d ended up with all of the district’s crop which was now lining fences and walls and inside living rooms.
Such is the country spirit. Humour and grit in the face of adversity.
But in the worst of times you see the best of Australians.
Like local fitter and farmer Pat Welsh who, with his mates John Augustin, Stephen Jones and Mick “Sparky” Miles, put their own lives at risk by wading into deep, surging water and saving dozens of people.
The story of their heroics would make for a blockbuster movie.
It was fortunate the flash flood hit in daylight because, as 70-year-old lifelong Eugowra resident Max Gransden explained, a disaster such as that in the dark “would’ve killed 150 people if not more”.
He said water was pooling around his ankles and within three minutes was up to his chin and he was scrambling to safety.
This week I saw many families crying. For homes and memories that have been washed away. For an exhausted community that will have to rebuild. And tears of frustration, as many question if any of it could have been prevented.
This week Forbes smashed its 24-hour rain record with 118 millimetres falling on already saturated ground.
There’s no match for Mother Nature. She is out of our control. But we need to work with systems and mechanisms to ensure we can reduce impact and severity where possible. The raising of the Wyangala Dam wall is one such mechanism to protect the people of Forbes, Condobolin, Cowra and elsewhere.
This week we’ve seen mass evacuations at Forbes and several feet of water gush through the central business district.
The flooding has been similar to the June 1952 level the town’s old-timers still talk about when a levee bank on Red Bend broke and sent a tsunami through Forbes.
For people in the bush, we don’t forget about the importance of having the right infrastructure in the right place … and it’s always the right time.
Dams are never not a priority. At the height of every water-related disaster we get close to signing off on action and then conditions ease. We lose attention, we lose momentum.
The only silver lining to these horrific events is that we learn.
And the lesson this week is we need Wyangala Dam wall heightened. Now.
Since 1887 Forbes has experienced a major flood event on average every seven years but the town has endured five floods in the past dozen years … or eight if you count the four peaks this year as separate events.
The people of Forbes are a hardy lot, but they’re growing weary of flooding that could be minimised.
Raising Wyangala Dam wall by 10 metres to 95 metres increases the capacity of this vital piece of water infrastructure by 650 gigalitres – the equivalent of Sydney Harbour plus 60,000 Olympic-size swimming pools!
Imagine the increased cropping and stock production with that added water!
Moreover, and in the context of yet another Central West flooding disaster, consider the mitigation this would provide for downstream communities desperate for a few flood-free years.
So let’s stop the procrastination. The bureaucracy. Even if the cost is north of $2 billion it is an investment for the future … for people and the economy.
If it’s good enough for Warragamba Dam to be heightened to save lives and livelihoods then it must be good enough for the fine folk at Forbes.