Sophie Burge and mother Louise lose hope looking out to paddocks filled with the huge force of water from blown banks.
Photo by
Sophie Burge
Nothing has been learned since the 2016 floods which devastated families along the Murray River system, according to local farmer Louise Burge.
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Watching the Murray River and its tributaries rise over the last few weeks, including the Bullatale Creek at the back of her home, has brought back “traumatic” memories of that flood event.
In it, Mrs Burge and her husband Andrew lost stock, crops and were virtually stranded on islands on their own property when the banks of the creek were breached.
And they say with better management of the river systems and the dam releases, the severity of that flood could have been avoided.
With less “wriggle room” in the dams now than in 2016, Mrs Burge said she can “only hope” we don’t see a repeat this year, or in future years.
But she said until the relevant authorities take heed, and learn from the 12 years of documented warnings and physical evidence since, nothing will change.
“Combined governments are still not instructing their Basin Officials Committee (BOC) representatives and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to implement an existing operating rule for the Hume Dam that allows airspace management, which could help mitigate some of the major flooding risks,” she said.
“Under current Hume Dam management rules, there is up to 386 gigalitres - or just under 13 per cent of Hume Dam - that can be utilised as airspace to help manage the extremes of flooding risks.
“Dartmouth is on the brink of spilling, Hume Dam is almost full, there are high flows down the Darling and this all means abundant water to meet all irrigation allocation needs.
“However, the MDBA is managing the Hume Dam on a model that makes predictions on ‘lowest sequence inflows’ for every year, over a 114 or so years. The model assesses worst case inflow scenarios instead of actual reality conditions.
“The combined effect of ignoring a Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) forecast of a 100mm rain event, and a reliance on a model developed during drought, is what led to catastrophic flooding in 2016.
“The Murray-Darling Basin Authority ended up dumping 20 per cent of Hume Dam in one week, causing such levels of flooding that the Central Murray Floodplain Plan failed.
“This year’s risks are even worse, as most major storages in the Southern Basin are nearly full.”
Andrew Burge and his father Brian pumping water from the garden surrounding Brian's home.
Photo by
Sophie Burge
Mrs Burge said this has all occurred despite evidence that Australia is in the grip of La Nina conditions.
Murray Valley Action Group Richard Sargood said he too has “pleaded” with the authorities to change their approach.
MVAG has represented farmers between Hume Dam and Yarrawonga Weir for more than 50 years, and Mr Sargood participates in weekly hook ups with the MDBA.
"I have pleaded for a common sense approach saying, where possible, the extremes of flooding risks should be mitigated,“ he said.
“This can be done without impacting the security of irrigation water.
“The MDBA has discussions on river flow heights below Hume Dam, but the MDBA is still aiming to fill Hume regardless of La Nina conditions.
“The MDBA won’t even allow for inflows that can be reasonably expected. They instead rely on serially correlated flows which always under estimates the volume of water entering the dams.
“If you don’t have a realistic expectation of what is coming in, how can you manage what you let out?”.
Adding to his concerns, Mr Sargood said a recent meeting with the MDBA and BoM representatives failed to acknowledge that Eastern Australia is in a La Nina event.
He said the BoM said it was watching to see “if” a La Nina event occurs.
“This is despite most world models stating Eastern Australia is in La Nina conditions.
“I can’t understand why the MDBA are ignoring the risks. Every climate model in existence is forecasting the next three months will be significantly wetter than average.”
Mrs Burge said it “beggars belief” that politicians and bureaucrats are not utilising an airspace rule available to them to help mitigate a flood disaster in the Murray Valley.
“They hide behind modelled predictions of lowest sequence inflows and political decisions that traded the Murray Valley off under the Murray Darling Basin Plan,” she said.
“I have no doubt this is also influencing decisions.
“To make matters worse BOC representatives do not consult with our Murray Valley communities, despite requests to do so.
“Decisions affect both New South Wales and Victorian sides of the Murray Valley, but flooding impacts on the New South Wales side will end up being worse.”
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