A flood management expert says too little caution was taken when the Flemington Racecourse flood wall was built in 2007, and it is almost impossible to fix mitigation problems on the Maribyrnong River caused by poor decision-making.
Mark Babiser is on the Melbourne Water review panel looking at the 2022 floods that drenched hundreds of homes. On Friday, he told another inquiry, in state parliament, that the mitigation efforts when the wall was constructed had suffered from a lack of caution.
The Flemington Racecourse flood wall kept the track in perfect condition while Maribyrnong homes flooded.Credit: Emma Johnston
“The technology at the time made it hard for them to be definitive but nobody erred on the side of caution. That is probably the biggest mistake,” Babiser told the parliamentary inquiry into the floods on Friday.
“It’s really easy to avoid flooding by putting things in the right place, so you’ve got to get the decision right at the start. And it’s very hard to fix it afterwards … On a river, it’s nearly impossible.”
Former Supreme Court judge Tony Pagone chaired Melbourne Water’s review of the October 2022 Maribyrnong River flood, which damaged more than 600 properties. He told the inquiry he was surprised the Victoria Racing Club had not been required to ensure its works would not harm its neighbours.
Last week, Melbourne Water’s review panel released a report that found the racecourse wall increased flooding for 240 homes in Maribyrnong by up to three centimetres during the disaster, including some homes that probably would have avoided inundation if the wall had not been built.
The report also identified that the 2.4-metre wall’s associated mitigation works, built by the VRC in 2007 with Melbourne Water’s approval, had been “largely ineffective” in 2022.
Pagone told Friday’s parliamentary hearing that when he and fellow panel members asked the VRC if there was a report on the mitigation works, “the answer in a nutshell was ‘no’”.
He found it “odd” the club had not been obliged to examine the works’ effectiveness and felt there should be more attention to governance.
“What does concern me,” Pagone said, “is that there seemed to be nothing in place to evaluate the impact.”
“When [the VRC has] gone to the trouble of building a wall, which will inevitably have an impact, you’d think that governance issues might require that there be some additional requirements to come up with monitoring to make sure what it’s sought to achieve, subject to a condition, is working in the right kind of way and maybe there ought to be additional obligations imposed.”
Babiser said it would be more sensible for racecourses and other major infrastructure, such as bridges and motorways, to be built at a lower level than houses so they were inundated first.
“If people have built their houses at the appropriate level, in accordance with government guidance, we should try and make sure other uses don’t impact them,” he said.
Melbourne Water managing director Nerina Di Lorenzo, who also addressed the parliamentary inquiry on Friday, said work was needed to understand how flood mitigation along the Maribyrnong River catchment could be strengthened, with homes having been hit by an average of 80 centimetres of water during the 2022 inundation.
Di Lorenzo acknowledged the racecourse wall’s mitigation works did not perform as expected but defended Melbourne Water’s decision to green-light the project 20 years earlier.
“The data of the time said it should have had no impact and the mitigating should have offset that,” she said.
The racecourse wall came under significant scrutiny following widespread community anger when the track remained pristine while residents were wading through their muddied homes in October 2022.
The outrage flared after former VRC chief executive Dale Monteith praised the flood wall, posting “then and now” pictures of previous flooding at the racetrack.
The flood wall around Flemington Racecourse on October 14, 2022.Credit: Aisha Dow
“Pretty happy that we have left a legacy for future of Flemington. Was always going to happen but ignored previously,” he wrote in a since-deleted post.
The racecourse wall has been a point of tension for the community ever since plans for it were lodged by the VRC in 2003.
Residents campaigned against it, arguing that erecting the structure around a natural floodplain would push water into their homes.
It was built in 2007 after Labor’s then planning minister Mary Delahunty overturned a bid by the Maribyrnong, Melbourne and Moonee Valley councils to block it.
The flood wall was approved with Melbourne Water modelling showing it wouldn’t increase the risk to people and property if certain compensatory steps were taken.
A VRC spokeswoman said: “Following the conclusion of the hearings of the parliamentary inquiry in the 2022 flood event in Victoria, the VRC remains committed to working with Melbourne Water and other relevant authorities in connection with this matter.”
A Melbourne Water spokesman said data collected from the October 2022 flood had helped the government-owned authority to better understand the impact of the wall’s compensatory works. “We will now look at the best ways to improve them,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Water Minister Harriet Shing said the government would respond to the parliamentary inquiry findings in due course and work with Melbourne Water to identify areas to improve flood mitigation and response efforts.
The Melbourne Water review, ordered by former premier Daniel Andrews, was criticised last year because of a perceived lack of independence and the limited scope of its terms of reference.
A wider-ranging flood parliamentary inquiry was later established after extensive reporting by The Age and the backing of Coalition, Greens and crossbench MPs. Its final report will be prepared following Friday’s hearings.
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