Comment: Third world flood and bushfire mitigation on a first world budget

Mitigation involves pre-event works that reduce the need for an expensive emergency response.

An analysis of the annual reports of the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) reveals a substantial taxpayer-funded investment but also organisational issues impeding efficient and effective delivery of improved outcomes for rural Victoria.

They show:

• DELWP expenditure was $3.1 billion in 2021-22;

• total expenditure has increased by 11 per cent a year and is now double what it was six years ago;

• employee numbers have increased by nine per cent a year and are up about 75 per cent on six years ago;

• the number of executives has almost tripled in the past six years — too many in suits and not enough in boots;

• at June 30, 2022, 59 per cent of DELWP’s 5400 employees worked in the Melbourne central business district, which is totally inappropriate for what is mostly a rural ‘portfolio’ (53 per cent increase over the past three years); and

• only 11 per cent of employees are field staff, which is totally inappropriate for the effective management of 7.5 million hectares of native forest along with catchments, rivers and dams in rural Victoria.

DELWP is an inefficient and ineffective conglomerate in urgent need of a re-organisation to refocus on delivering much better outcomes, particularly for rural communities. The inefficiencies and ineffective management have contributed to failed flood mitigation and failed bushfire mitigation.

Victoria has a long history of floods (since 1900, the state has experienced floods in 1909, 1916, 1917, 1934, 1956, 1974, 1990, 1998, 2007, 2010-12 and 2022) and bushfires (1851, 1898, 1926, 1932, 1939, 1944, 1965, 1969, 1983, 2003, 2007, 2009 and 2019-20).

The 2022 floods claimed two lives and the 2019-20 bushfires claimed five lives.

The recent flooding rains are not unprecedented, should have been foreseen and flood mitigation infrastructure upgraded following the floods a decade ago.

The 2022 Victorian spring floods are attributed to the cyclical confluence of four natural climate patterns that deliver wet weather to Victoria — La Niña over the Pacific, Negative Indian Ocean Dipole, Madden-Julian Oscillation active in the Pacific and Positive Southern Annular Mode.

The floods of late 2010, early 2011 and the first half of 2012 resulted in significant damage to urban and rural properties in regional Victoria. Following these floods, a parliamentary inquiry into flood mitigation infrastructure was held in 2012.

This found much of the state’s existing flood mitigation infrastructure required serious remediation and attention. Given the extent of the damage from the recent 2022 floods, there would appear to have been insufficient flood mitigation since 2012.

This spring, Echuca had to hastily construct a levee that failed to protect many homes on the ‘wrong’ side.

In 2016, the Victorian Government allocated $21 million to implement the Victorian Regional Flood Management Strategy (RFMS) over four years and an additional $26.7 million was allocated in July 2021 to complete the strategy’s outstanding actions.

Key projects funded include the development of nine Regional Floodplain Management flood studies, flood mitigation infrastructure (documents rather than physical installations) and early warning systems for local communities, together with an ‘intelligence platform’ to support emergency management.

In terms of flood mitigation, the DELWP has delivered reports, frameworks, guidance notes, permit kits, engagement processes, a revised flood emergency plan and a case for legislative amendments.

Flood-effected communities in regional Victoria need effective physical flood mitigation assets such as effective levees, retarding basins and gated spillways, rather than ‘more documents’.

The 2012 flood inquiry found poor management of many of the state’s 4000km of levees, and a clear need to invest more in them and resolve who is responsible for managing and paying for them.

The 2012 flood inquiry recommended improved management of vegetation in waterways, resolving management responsibility and overhauling the cumbersome, time consuming and expensive permit system for flood mitigation works on waterways.

The 2012 flood inquiry found that most of the 400 dams owned and operated by water corporations had fixed crest spillways and small outlet pipes that could only deliver limited flood mitigation.

If dams had gated spillways and larger outlets and with a dam size that allowed for ‘airspace’ above ‘water allocation volumes’, then these dams could deliver improved flood mitigation. Gated dams allow for greater regulation of water flow rates around flood events, to reduce flood peaks.

The NSW Premier has decided to ‘put people before plants’ and reduce the current risks to life and property by raising Warragamba Dam to create a flood mitigation zone of about 14 metres. NSW Infrastructure assessed this as ‘the single most effective flood mitigation option available’.

Retarding basins are designed to provide temporary water storage to reduce peak flows for flood protection. Melbourne Water manages more than 200 retarding basins across Greater Melbourne which are sited in parklands, sporting grounds and wetlands.

Loddon Shire Council called for the construction of retarding basins in the middle and upper reaches of the Loddon River in 2012. There has been no effective action on retarding basins for rural Victoria despite changes to catchment hydrology from land use change and regional urban development.

In 2020, Ernst and Young conducted an audit of DELWP’s implementation of its Flood Plain Management Strategy and DELWP has refused to release the audit.

The DELWP strategy clearly failed to protect thousands of properties. The Ernst and Young audit was paid for by taxpayers and flood-affected communities should be able to see and comment on this audit report.

DELWP has a history of delivering reports or rhetoric and not delivering practical physical outcomes. DELWP is a conglomerate that is out of touch with regional requirements, not surprising given 59 per cent of employees work in the city centre.

Inaction on flood mitigation is similar to the lack of effective implementation of findings from the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission, following the disastrous 2009 bushfires that claimed 173 lives.

The Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission recommended that the government fuel reduce on average five per cent per year of its 7.5 million hectares of public forest (i.e. 375,000ha a year).

The government failed and has only achieved about 1.5 per cent per year. Since 2016 and the introduction of its failed ‘Safer Together’ fire policy, DELWP has only fuel reduced 1.2 per cent of the forest each year.

The 1.5 million hectares burnt by wildfire in 2019-20 has been directly attributed to insufficient fuel reduction, along with tardy initial attack and inadequate fire suppression in the fortnight after ignition, when the forest fire danger index was low enough for effective suppression.

John Cameron (Dip Hort, MBA) is a consultant with expertise in delivering efficient and effective outcomes for rural industries and communities.