NSW Northern River farmers grapple with financial impacts of floods

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Tensions are beginning to ease across the New South Wales Northern Rivers region as flood waters start to drop along major rivers. A number of warnings still remain in place across large parts of the area as some farmers grapple with the financial impacts of the floods.

Transcript

00:00Here in Grafton, the Clarence River fell below the major flooding level mark yesterday after

00:08a top of 5.7 metres on Sunday.

00:12It's now sitting below the 5 metre mark and that has provided some relief for many communities

00:18along the Clarence River that they are finally past the worst of this natural disaster.

00:24Some areas remain steady while water levels seem to be dropping along most of those low

00:29lying communities now.

00:32Also overnight there were a number of emergency warnings that the SES has now downgraded.

00:37Those include Cars Island and the Cars Peninsula here in Grafton where people are now being

00:43told just to avoid the area.

00:46You also have further upstream at Brushgrove where people are now being told they can return

00:51to their homes with caution after an initial evacuation warning.

00:56Now the Mayor of the Clarence Valley Council says that there is still a number of issues

01:01to deal with in this local government area.

01:04In particular he spoke about the closure of Yamba Road due to minor flooding there.

01:11That is essentially cut off the community of Yamba from essential resources.

01:17He says there has been a number of deliveries that have been able to be made to that community

01:21though over the past few days with the help of emergency service vehicles.

01:26The road into Yamba is still covered in water.

01:29So while it is officially closed we are allowing emergency services through with a pilot escort

01:36and any residents that may need to get back home.

01:39Now despite no reports of major flooding to homes or businesses so far there are still

01:46a number of farms that have been affected by flooding in recent days.

01:51Now the ABC spoke to a beef farmer and a sugar cane farmer and he says he has been significantly

02:00impacted by the last few days of flooding.

02:03He is based here in Grafton.

02:04He had to move a lot of his cattle to higher ground and now he is lucky he did so because

02:10large parts of his paddocks are now inundated with water.

02:14Now the water levels have been sitting relatively high over the last few hours and have been

02:19dropping slowly compared to other major weather events and the State Emergency Service says

02:26that is largely due to high tides and large waves coming off the east coast.

02:32That is affecting certain farmers because it means large parts of their paddocks are

02:36remaining underwater for longer periods of time.

02:40It also is having a significant impact on their crops as well.

02:43Here is what that farmer from Grafton had to say.

02:47It's really sitting steady there now and I think there is more water coming down but

02:52I don't think we are going to get any further heights.

02:53It's just how long the crops are going to sit underwater for.

02:56It's how they come out of it.

02:57It's going to be a wait and see game.

02:58It will be probably 45-50% of it on our farm.

03:03We have got a 300 acre farm here and the majority of it is sugar cane.

03:06We do keep beef cattle up around the homestead, around the house here but it's mostly sugar

03:12cane and at the moment we have got 20 acres of soy being in and fingers crossed we will

03:16only lose half of it.

03:18The Federal Government announced yesterday that it was providing disaster recovery allowance

03:22payments for up to 13 weeks and those are for people who have lost or their income has

03:28been affected due to this weather event.

03:32Now in the meantime people are still having to face the impacts of this flooding emergency

03:39now and there is obviously going to be a big clean up when the waters finally return

03:44to normal.

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