Bundaberg residents fear little will have been done to protect their city if another catastrophic flood hits

It was the largest evacuation effort in peacetime Australia at the time.

Helicopters whizzed back and forth plucking sodden, stranded residents out of Bundaberg in 2013.

About 5,000 people were forced to leave their homes after Tropical Cyclone Oswald swamped the city, four hours’ north of Brisbane.

In the years since, Australia has experienced dozens of flood events that have claimed lives and destroyed property.

Bundaberg residents fear if — or when — the next big one hits, little will have been done to protect their city.

“[People are scared] particularly when it looks like we’re going to have some heavy rain,” said Wallie Cochrane, a member of the Bundaberg Flood Protection Group (BFPG).

Long road to construction

An almost $175 million levee has been on the drawing board for years, but after enquiries from the ABC, the 770-page concept engineering report was finally released to the public in March — almost five years to the day since it was handed to the state government.

Under the joint state and federally funded project, a 1.7-kilometre concrete wall would be built parallel to the southern bank of the Burnett River to protect 600 properties in the east, south and centre of town.

At community consultations in April, the state Minister for Housing, Local Government and Planning and Public Works, Meaghan Scanlon, said the levee would build community resilience.

Construction on the levee was due to begin at the end of this year, more than 11 years after the catastrophic flood, but that is now uncertain.

“Planning and design work as well as consultation with Bundaberg Regional Council and the community continues,” said a department spokesperson.

“Construction is forecast to commence upon completion of the design process.”

There are also growing concerns among the cash-strapped local council over who will foot the ongoing costs of the levee.

“The cost per annum to ratepayers would be in the order of 4 per cent rate increase for ratepayers of the region,” Mayor Helen Blackburn said.

“We, as a council, moved a motion to accept the asset ownership on the condition that all costs … including stamp duty, maintenance, life-cycle replacement and future upgrade or disposal of the asset are to be funded by the Queensland government.”

‘Bleed it out of the system’

The ambitious proposal would potentially leave thousands of other homes and businesses vulnerable in North Bundaberg, one of the hardest hit zones in the 2013 record-breaking floods.

Authorities have been working on the best evacuation plan for people in the north, but that also hasn’t progressed.

Sid McKeown watched his home flood in 2013, but he will find himself on the “wrong side” of the proposed levee wall.

Unhappy with what they say is inaction from all levels of government, Mr McKeown and a dozen other locals formed their own Bundaberg Flood Protection Group.

“[We] believe we have the real solutions for the Bundaberg community, and by that I mean the wider Bundaberg community, not the 600 houses and businesses that [governments] keep talking about,” he said.

It has spent the past few years lobbying for its own alternative flood mitigation plan that utilises historical flood plains.

Since European settlement in Bundaberg in the 1800s, the flood plains surrounding the Burnett River have been used as agricultural fields and, more recently, housing development.

The group’s idea aims to “reinstate, restore and reconfigure” them by cutting into the riverbank, opening historical flood chutes.

“If you can get the early water and bleed it out of the system as the flood is developing, we think that’s a far more logical way of doing it,” Mr Cochrane said.

Not engineers or hydrologists

The state member for Bundaberg, Tom Smith, said the community group did not have engineering or hydrological expertise.

Mr Smith said the chief engineer who helped design the levee had already explained to the group why North Bundaberg would not be negatively impacted by a levee. 

James Cook University professor of geoscience Jonathan Nott said the idea of using flood plains should not be dismissed too quickly.

“I think it’s worthwhile to be able to investigate that, and at least have a look at that, and see if it would help reduce the size of very large floods impacting upon the residents of North Bundaberg,” he said.

Professor Nott said climate change was a glaring omission from the concept engineering report.

“In terms of rainfall events and flooding, the risk of these events is increasing year by year,” he said.

Professor Nott said using data from previous floods to model for future events was determining a risk that was already in the past.

“That’s not even the current day risk, and nor will it be the risk for the future,” he said.