Water NSW concludes Menindee flood system appropriate

ABC NEWS (Australia)

It's been just over a year since flooding inundated dozens of homes in the outback New South Wales town of Menindee. Water New South Wales has compiled a review of its own performance during the disaster. It found there were appropriate systems in place to operate water storages during flooding, but the findings are being questioned.

Transcript

00:00 Entering his guest accommodation for the first time, 76-year-old Paul Gross assesses the

00:07 damage.

00:10 "We've put over new floors on that in there."

00:12 Walls inside and out still plastered with mud, they're painful reminders of last year's

00:17 Menindee flood. Paul's property was one of dozens inundated by an overflowing Darling

00:23 River.

00:24 "That old bucket now, the walls, hard to see ten years of working. It's all gone, you

00:29 know, overnight. Bloody devastating. That was a $7000 kitchen we'd just done in here."

00:35 He was lucky to escape a rapidly rising river.

00:38 "It came as a shock to me, it was four o'clock in the morning, and the grandson got out to

00:42 go to the toilet and he yelled out popularly, 'and a metre of water!'"

00:46 Water NSW oversaw control of the Menindee Lakes upstream during the flood.

00:52 "The lakes had reached capacity, the surrounding area had reached capacity. We were seeing

00:56 a volume of water the equivalent of 20 Sydney Harbours making its way across the landscape."

01:01 Their decision making has formed part of a recent review.

01:04 "The report confirmed that while our actions reduced the severity of the flooding in the

01:09 immediate area, our communications could have been done better."

01:12 Graham McCrabb believes the report glosses over a number of failures.

01:16 "We had people that didn't realise there was water rising or coming through town until

01:21 it actually arrived in their house. The notification was terrible."

01:23 As early as January 2022, locals were raising concerns about large volumes of water coming

01:30 down the Darling.

01:31 "The community were trying to have meetings and raise the issue of airspace in the lakes

01:34 through May, June, July. It just didn't happen."

01:36 "Whatever they'd done was wrong. I think there's room for improvement on managing the water."

01:41 While his home won't ever be the same, Paul Gross is hopeful history won't repeat itself

01:47 for future floods.

01:48 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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