After the Qld monsoon: how one shire is coping

— filed under: Projects, Print Edition

MONSOONAL rains caused once-in-a-century flooding in southwestern Queensland in early March. The state government declared 80% of the affected area a natural disaster and predicted a damage bill of $300m.

A report by Sally Nicol in the April/May issue of Outback said a monsoonal low formed over the Northern Territory at the end of February. It then descended on southern Queensland and delivered daily falls of 100mm or more over an area two-thirds the size of Victoria.
Nicol says catchments were flooding simultaneously with warnings on most river systems including the Diamantina, Dawson, Maranoa, Warrego, Balonne and Moonie.
At St George, a township at the centre of a major cotton-growing region, the Balonne broke an 1890 record of 13.1m, peaking at 13.39m on March 7, swamping 25 houses.
Balonne Shire Council based in St George is looking at potentially $15m to $20m of damage to its road network covering 31,000km², says technical services director Paolo Turri.
“Under NDRAA, the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements, the council has two years from the event to complete restoration works. Two months on and the gravel pits still contain water with material pushed being too saturated for the crushing contractor to work with.
“Realistically the next two years of non-funded capital works will be deferred with our crews working on restoration works only.”
Turri says he’s mindful of the balance between using contractors and increasing the council’s workforce, as future funding is never guaranteed.
Under the Skilling Queenslanders for Work funding scheme, council currently has seven long-term unemployed indigenous people undertaking a 14-week civil construction traineeship. The program started on April 17 and ended on July 23.
Council intended at the end of July to advertise for three labourers for an immediate staff shortage it faced, with the intention to introduce two more construction crews for repair works, Turri said.
To emphasise the importance of the repair task he pointed out that straight after the floods, 6000 cotton modules (144,000t) were moved from local farms to nearby gins. The upside of the rain is that next year the industry is expecting more than 200,000 cotton modules to be harvested.
One cotton module weighs 22-24t. This equates to approximately 4.8m tonnes to be harvested next year.

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