Clean-up efforts underway in NSW but some residents remain cut off

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Over the border in New South Wales, northern rivers residents are returning to their homes, but the state emergency service says almost 100 warnings are still in place for communities along flooded river systems.

Transcript

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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