00:00Flood levels might be receding across the northern rivers of New South Wales, but it
00:06is a slow and almost painful process.
00:10What you can see behind me is a very swollen Richmond River.
00:14I'm here at Woodburn, just to the south of Ballina, where we still have moderate level
00:19flooding and a little bit further up the catchment at a place called Bungawalwin, we still have
00:24major level flooding.
00:26The people there are isolated and they expect to remain that way for quite a few days.
00:31We've already got the SES has been choppering in supplies for people when they run out of
00:36essentials in that part of the world.
00:38There is a lot of water around and we have a community in the Bungawalwin area and also
00:42the Korokai area, which have been isolated for could be up to four days prior now, and
00:48could be isolated for another four days.
00:51We're getting jobs in for resupply and restocking as we speak, not very many, but we expect
00:55more if the water doesn't go down.
00:58The Bungawalwin levee has been topping for the last four days.
01:01It's still topping by 300 mil.
01:04Now you heard Ashley Slapp from the SES there mentioned the Bungawalwin levee.
01:08Now there's been a lot of talk in this community about that particular structure and why more
01:13hasn't been done to repair it and make it more effective.
01:16In fact, flood mitigation infrastructure is really the hot topic of conversation.
01:21I just spent some time with a local farmer, Tony Karusi, down at the Tuckambool Canal.
01:26Now what we've got there is a concrete weir across the width of that canal.
01:31Now in normal times, it works to keep seawater from moving too far inland and wrecking the
01:36soil on farms, but in times of a flood, well, it works in exactly the opposite way from
01:42what it was intended, stopping the flow of floodwater back out to sea.
01:47What that means is things are draining perhaps slower than they naturally would.
01:53You've got the best part of two metres height of that weir across the full width of the
01:58canal and unfortunately no water can go through concrete.
02:03And the only water that's escaping, and there's still a substantial amount that's doing that,
02:08is going over the top of the weir and escaping to the ocean via the Evans River system.
02:15So all sorts of flood mitigation models will be the subject of a study by the CSIRO.
02:21That's taken two to three years to complete and we expect to see that released by the
02:25middle of this year.
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