Trucks began spraying stormwater “full tilt” into the back yard of Bobby Lang’s Echuca home two days ago.
Lang said that since an emergency levee was built to help protect part of the town from recent flooding, those houses within the levee have no outlet for their stormwater, so authorities are pumping it back over the barrier when it rains.
“They’re filling up this end quicker than what it needs to be, than what the natural flow of what the flood would usually do,” Lang said on Tuesday.
People affected argued a decision had been made to pump water from the protected “right side” of the levee towards houses on the “wrong side”.
James Hayes stayed up all night pumping water out from his home where the water is now above knee height.
His wife, Jemima Lewis, said it was “infuriating” when she heard reports from her neighbour Lang that the pumps protecting the rest of the town were being directed into homes.
Lewis questioned if there was an alternate solution to water being returned over the man-made levee into the yards of residents who had been battling torrents of flood water for several days.
Instead, “all the work we’re doing to pump the water out they’re putting all the water from the rest of the town and putting it straight back into where we are confined behind the man-made levee,” Lewis said. “It’s pretty shit.”
Over the weekend, Lewis, who is a DJ, had turned their flooded street into a dance venue to lift the spirits of the community.
“That was when it was all still pretty fun and entertaining. You know, the water was only ankle-deep then,” she said. “But now it’s obviously quite serious.
“We’re not, you know, one side of the wall v the other. We are one, we’re very united with our neighbours and ourselves. But like, for this, this is kind of like the nail in the coffin really.”
Victoria’s emergency management commissioner, Andrew Crisp, said he had asked whether the excess water could be directed elsewhere – but added residents were warned their houses could be affected.
“We need to get to a point [where] we need to assess what has actually occurred if this levee holds and then at a point in time there will be further discussions with the community,” Crisp told reporters on Tuesday.
A 3km emergency levee was built through Echuca’s streets using tonnes of dirt and 195,000 sandbags to protect the centre of town from the worst of the disaster.
Crisp said “the nature of emergency management means that sometimes difficult and challenging decisions need to be made.”
“The temporary levee at Echuca mitigates the flood risk for as much of the community as possible,” he said.
“We appreciate the challenges faced by residents beyond the temporary levee area and continue to do everything we can to support all communities impacted by this significant flood event.”
The Campaspe shire council on Tuesday said there had been “a number of questions and rumours circulating in the community relating to past flood events and whether the appropriate action has been taken”.
The council said it “was not consulted on the levee’s location or design” following Emergency Management Victoria’s decision on 17 October that the levee needed to be constructed “to protect as much of the township as possible”.
“Based on the flood modelling available in the incident control centre in Bendigo, Emergency Management Victoria had 48 hours to put the levee in place.
“The levee’s location was decided by Emergency Management Victoria to save as many homes as possible from flooding and at the same time the decision needed to consider the short 48-hour time frame to undertake the work, required height of the levee, plant and equipment access and the engineering requirements for the levee construction,” the statement said.
But Crisp on Tuesday told reporters he understood local government had been engaged in discussions about the levee.
