A council decision to remove dozens of bridges and lower the road level around Moulamein is under scrutiny as unprecedented flood waters cause millions of dollars in damage.
The small Riverina town has been cut off for 10 days due to record flooding of the Edward River, which is predicted to reach 6.3m over the weekend. It is expected to remain isolated through December.
The main road from Moulamein to the nearby town of Barham is now under water. It used to be higher and had “50 bridges in 50 miles,” said Moulamein grower Jeremy Morton. But over the last 30 years, as the bridges began to reach the end of their life, the council decided to remove them and lower the road level.
“It was about money,” Morton said. “Bridges are expensive and roads are cheaper. But now, you have a situation like this and all the roads are under water … we’re living the consequences of the solution.”
Morton, who is also the chair of the National Irrigators Council, said that while the bridges were expensive to maintain, repairing the flood-damaged roads would take years.
Moulamein sits on the Murray River floodplain, a landscape scattered with rivers and creeks. Many roads had low bridges spanning ephemeral waterways. Those bridges were expensive to maintain and not able to carry heavy trucks, and since 1990 the Murray River Council has been replacing them with roads.
“They don’t call it the Riverina for nothing,” the independent MP for the NSW seat of Murray, Helen Dalton, said.
Dalton accused successive governments of cutting corners on regional road funding.
“They’ve cut corners for years … they also haven’t really built good quality roads,” she said. “It’s always been a patch up, ‘She’ll be right.’ And here it is now falling to bits.”
The shire last week announced it had joined with Local Government NSW and the Country Mayors Association of NSW in declaring a state-wide road emergency over the estimated $2.5bn damage caused by flooding to regional roads.
Morton said the road to Barham had been “destroyed” by flood water, which has been flowing over it for three weeks, and many other roads in the district are being “washed away”.
“There’s significant access issues and there’s significant structural damage to the roads,” he said. “They’re going to have to completely start again on various sections of road.”
Morton’s parents, who are in their 80s, live on the family farm about 12km from town.
“So that’s now isolated and we’re actually boating there,” he said. “It’ll be a month at least I would say until the water has gone, and then you can get in and start looking at repairing.”
Jack Bond, Murray River Council’s infrastructure director, said four of the five roads intoMoulamein are currently closed, and the fifth is also flooded.
“Right now, our road network has very significant damage due to flooding,” he said.
Bond said the full extent of the damage was not known, because flood water has only receded enough to conduct a damage assessment in 40% of the affected area. The assessment identified 267 issues in need of repair, and he estimates there will be more damage downstream.
Bond said the council’s decision to remove the old bridges was “a more affordable option taking into account ongoing monitoring and maintenance”.
He said the bridges were often on roads used by one or two farmers, and that this month’s floods were bigger than a one in 100-year event – the standard that bridges are built to – so the roads would be cut off even if the bridges remained.
“Moulamein was isolated during the 1956 flood, when all the bridges were still in operation,” Bond said.
The NSW government has announced a $50m fund to repair potholes caused by flooding.
But Dalton said that was “just a drop in the ocean”.
“The state government needs to allocate about $2bn, probably even just to this electorate, just to fix things up,” she said. “And all those little bridges that once were down in that area around Moulamein, they need to be reinstated and fixed up.”
Let us know about roads in your district that have suffered flood damage. Fleur.Connick@theguardian.com.au
