An amount of $230,000 has been approved under the government’s Regional Housing Strategic Planning Fund designed to allow the management of stormwater for urban growth throughout the council area incorporating climate change adaptation.
There is also council contribution of $161,000 excluding GST, bringing the total project budget to $391,000 excluding GST.
Council's contribution will comprise $50,000 that is currently in the 2023/2024 budget and a further allocation of $111,000 from the 2024/2025 budget.
The Regional Housing Strategic Planning Fund was launched on August 25, 2022 as part of the NSW Government's response to the Regional Housing Taskforce’s recommendations.
The planning fund of $12 million competitive grants program aims to enable and accelerate the delivery of strategic planning projects, technical studies and policies that support increased housing supply, affordability, diversity and resilience in regional NSW. Applications for the second round 2 opened on August 8, 2023 and closed on September 29, 2023.
In 2020 Federation Council began preparing Growth Management Strategy for the council area. The project identified a number of servicing plans are required to support the growth management strategy.
Council’s director engineering services Theo Panagopoulos said the preparation of stormwater drainage strategies for all council’s townships forms part of the overall Growth Management Strategy.
“The flood study for the northern area of the council has been completed and the flood study for the southern area (Murray River Catchment) is currently being prepared,” he advised council’s latest monthly meeting on March 26.
“The southern area flood study project has been added to twice due to two events in 2022 - the flooding throughout the council area from September to December 2022 and a rain event in the township of Corowa on 31 January 2022.”
The event in Corowa saw over 230mm rain fall on the town in a 90 minute period. “The modelling is still to be complete, but the preliminary modelling defined this event as a 1:2000 year event,” Mr Panagopolous said.
“Popular media have dubbed these type of rain events as ‘rain bombs’.
“The impact of the event on privately owned property within the council area was equal in significance to the moderate to major flood event that impacted the council area as a whole in the last quarter of 2022.
“From investigations undertaken after the events of 2022 it is clear that council need to prepare stormwater strategy as a matter of urgency to ensure all the systems are interconnected and also to ensure that adequate servicing is provided into the future.”
