Launceston prepares for more environmental risks finding new ways to protect the city

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Launceston is a city vulnerable to flooding and modelling has shown the risk will increase as climate change accelerates and sea levels rise. The local council is preparing a new flood mitigation strategy, and community groups are also investigating ways to protect the city.

Transcript

00:00The river system is the heartbeat of Launceston.

00:05It's a place for recreation and home to an array of plant and animal species.

00:10But it also poses a threat to the people who live here and their properties

00:15due to its penchant for flooding.

00:18Concerned resident Andrew Lovett says levees alone aren't enough to protect the city

00:23as climate change exacerbates its flood risk.

00:27The clock is ticking. Most people in this city agree the next major flood

00:32is not a matter of if, but when.

00:35He's calling on authorities to seriously consider installing floodgates

00:40on the Kanemaluka-Tamer estuary, an idea his group has been investigating for 15 years.

00:46If you let a flood get into and destroy a town, the recovery isn't just draining the water away.

00:53The recovery is getting all the economic activities and the environment back to the way you'd like it to be.

00:58The floodgates would create a lake to their south and transform the majority of the estuary

01:03into a freshwater environment.

01:05But a scientist warns that would have devastating environmental consequences.

01:10Aquatic fauna and flora at the moment live in a salty environment with a tide that comes in twice a day.

01:19It would then either have to adapt to a freshwater environment or find somewhere else to live.

01:25Those changes need to be put against the protection of maybe a billion dollars of restoring Envermay

01:33and all the buildings being wiped out, lives being lost etc.

01:38On the bank of the North Esk River, a smaller scale flood mitigation project is underway.

01:43What happened was in the 2016 flood, a huge big chunk of our farm bank went in the river.

01:51Since then, Tara and Rob Coker have worked with NRM North to install a rock wall and plant trees to stabilise the riverbank,

01:58what's known as Nature Based Solutions.

02:02We've had floods come over that same area and what's happened is the trees have actually slowed the flow of the water.

02:10I don't know whether you could ever stop flooding in Launceston's.

02:14I think, you know, where Launceston's situated, on a floodplain it's probably going to flood.

02:19How we reduce that flooding though, I think Nature Based Solutions can provide some of that solution.

02:26The City of Launceston is in the process of developing a flood mitigation strategy,

02:30with floodgates and Nature Based Solutions both listed as measures for consideration.

02:35The Council says the strategy will be finalised in three years' time.

02:39einen

02:42an

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