Date of release: Monday February 27, 2012

Catchment chief highlights flood referral service

Wimmera Catchment Management Authority has urged residents to tap into a free flood referral service.

Chief executive David Brennan said the CMA offered a free flood referral service to help people understand the risk of flooding on their properties.

“The CMA has a range of flood information from flood investigations and historical records that showed the flooding risks on individual properties. We encourage people to contact us and make an appointment to come in and fill out a form or we can email people the form to fill out at home and either email, post or fax back to us,” Mr Brennan said.

“It will take about two weeks for us to provide a formal response which will be useful when assessing your insurance policies and deciding on the policy that suits your individual needs.”

The media reported in January that some Wimmera residents had been hit with massive insurance increases because insurers had changed their policies to include flood cover. Earlier this month Member for Lowan Hugh Delahunty said concerned residents had called him, including many who did not live in flood-prone areas.

Mr Brennan said the CMA was also sending out a joint letter with Horsham Rural City Council for people in the Horsham municipality living on the floodplain, formally called ‘land subject to inundation’.

Mr Brennan said local government planning permits applied to certain activities including construction and raising the level of land in a floodplain and the CMA played a role in helping council assess those permits.

“We are working closely with the Horsham council to try and get as much information to the community as possible about how to better protect their homes and their neighbours’ homes from flooding,” Mr Brennan said.

“It’s a real balancing act to ensure that if one landowner wants to undertake construction or raise the level of land on their property that could impact on the topography of the floodplain or affect the natural flow of floodwater, it is not to the detriment of their neighbours and other people on the floodplain.”

Mr Brennan said the joint Horsham Rural City Council letter and the flood referral service were among several initiatives to help the community better prepare for future flood events.