Attention: Peter Walsh and Strathallan farmer Paul Ford checking out the inadequate box culvert on a flood-damaged road which after repairs now sits 200mm higher than before, creating a potential levee which could devastate thousands of acres of productive farmland when the next flood comes.
Farmers and residents around Strathallan and Nanneella are fed up with bureaucratic bungling with the potential to turn their properties into lakes because VicRoads engineers have turned a stretch of McKenzie Rd into an accidental levee bank.
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Farmers lost millions of dollars’ worth of crops, livestock and infrastructure in 2011 and again last year.
Now they have recruited the Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, to help in their fight for better mitigation strategies and to get the road immediately lowered.
An extended stretch of road connecting Echuca and Kyabram was rebuilt earlier this year after being extensively damaged in the October 2022 floods.
But local farmers told work crews the job they were doing was going to be 200mm too high.
Paul Ford has run a dairy farm alongside McKenzie Rd for 30 years and he knows what floods can do there — but is prepared to live with it.
What he is not prepared to live with is seeing his year’s work destroyed by city-centric decision makers who “seem oblivious” to what they have done.
“While 2011 was bad, it was nowhere near what we went through — we lost 95 per cent of our property, 100 per cent of our fodder crops were destroyed, the vetch went rotten and the sub-clovers drowned,” Mr Ford said.
“So much water came through once it had devastated Rochester there was nothing we could do to mitigate.
“But it still had somewhere to go but the next flood to come through won’t be going anywhere, it will be in our backyard for weeks, maybe months.”
Near neighbour Adam Whipp is another who has been telling anyone and everyone who will listen that VicRoads has built a time bomb and local farmers will be the victims.
Mr Whipp said he tackled the construction crew and supervisors at the time, and was back talking to them a fortnight ago when a new crew was sent to resurvey the road.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work this out — but when I was first trying to show the mistake being made, I was brushed off,” he said.
“The subcontractors working on the road could see what I was saying and agreed with me but the people in charge didn’t want to know.
“But it’s simply too high and it has to be fixed — now.”
Fix this: Peter Walsh and Strathallan farmer Paul Ford checking out the inadequate box culvert on a flood-damaged road which after repairs now sits 200mm higher than before, creating a potential levee which could devastate thousands of acres of productive farmland when the next flood comes.
Mr Whipp said the people doing the recent survey told him it was for a hydrological report that would be a few weeks away.
Which he says is about next week, or certainly the one after.
“I want to see that report, I want to know what it really shows and I am sure plenty of people around here do as well,” he said.
“We certainly paid for our share of it, with more than $1 million just in lost crops,” he said.
Mr Walsh said he “just cannot fathom” how much longer people already traumatised and impacted by the floods will have to deal with a government which has totally failed them in their recovery.
He added with all the technology available — plus the experience of two massive floods in barely a decade — it is “inexcusable” for an organisation whose sole job is to manage our road network to make such a mess of a simple project.
“All the data is there at the fingertips of the engineers, where the floods came from, how high it went when it reached here and where it needs to go next,” Mr Walsh said.
“You cannot know everything they did and still get it this wrong — even if they had been aware of the height issue and planned to offset it some other way I can’t, for the life of me, work out what it might be.
“It certainly can’t be box culverts, because the only ones I saw would struggle with a mild downpour and have no hope with any kind of flooding, let alone what we saw 12 months ago.
“I will be pursuing this with the minister, with VicRoads and with the Parliament until I can get an answer which makes sense and which will give Paul, and Adam and all the others the information they need — and the commitment to fix the problem before it is too late.”
