By Mikayla van Loon
Without a doubt, 2024 was a year where flooding and stormwater management dominated Star Mail’s headlines, primarily in Lilydale and Mount Evelyn, but also across the Yarra Ranges.
The year began with the stories of residents impacted severely by continuous flooding especially in suburban Lilydale.
Having finished 2023 with a letter of complaint to Yarra Ranges Council and a story on the inundation seen throughout the Gateway Estate, it wasn’t far into January that residents began telling their own stories of flooding.
In January and February, Star Mail spoke to various residents, from Megan and Billy who live on Hermitage Street, to Rosemary and Marlene who both live on Chapel Street and to a group of residents who live on or around Bristol Crescent.
Each had experienced immense flooding, some over a period of at least 20 years.
The stories were repetitive in some ways, with complaints of inadequate stormwater management to cater to the growth in the region and increasing heavy rainfall events.
Although they experienced some flooding instances in the 40-odd years living on Bristol Crescent, resident Julie said the issue was only increasing.
“It’s getting worse. With climate change and the torrential downpours it’s getting worse of late,” she said.
“The volume of homes in the street has doubled but they haven’t upgraded anything and every time they put a unit in, they dig across the road and they tap into this pit. Everyone’s just tapping into this one point which is right at the foot of our property and it can’t cope,” Billy said of Heritage Street.
“There’s unmade gutters and nothing from the corner [of Clarke Street] except the dip in the land. There’s no continuous drainage to allow the water to get away,” Rosemary said.
With many residents submitting petitions to Yarra Ranges Council, council meetings were regularly attended by residents seeking action and responses to questions or submissions.
It was at the Tuesday 12 March meeting that the first mention of a “catchment analysis” and stormwater management plan was heard.
Councillors also voted at this meeting to put forward a motion that would ask the Municipal Association of Victoria to advocate on behalf of the shire for the State Government to improve flood mapping data, develop a Flood Information Framework and invest in flood mitigation infrastructure.
Questions were still being raised in April on the progression of the stormwater management plan, to which council’s building environment and infrastructure director Hjalmar Philipp said assessments and investigations were underway.
In speaking with Star Mail, Lilydale Flood Watch member Michelle said at the top of the list when it comes to putting the stormwater plan together, “regular, empathetic and genuine face to face engagement” and “inclusive and prolonged and proactive consultation” would be a priority for residents impacted by the experience of flooding.
“[I would like to see] Yarra Ranges Council officers actively survey the land with members of the community whose streets and homes which experience flooding to accurately hear first-hand of the direction, velocity, frequency and the impact of the upstream housing subdivisions and what impact it is having downstream,” she said.
Yarra Ranges Council’s draft budget in April allocated an amount of $16 million to drainage and infrastructure over six years.
Corporate services director, at the time, Andrew Hilson agreed “it’s probably never going to be enough” but it would have to be a smart investment over time.
“We’ve just got decades of old drainage infrastructure that needs to be upgraded over time. So it’s going to take some time. It’s going to take this kind of conservative investment over a long period of time,” he said.
“I imagine there’ll be plenty of people who sort of say, actually my road or my area isn’t on the list for the next couple of years. That’s probably true.
“There’s only so many dollars that have to be prioritised in terms of what we can do quickly and now and then the rest has to come over time.”
The fear of further flooding and greater impacts for houses downstream of the Olinda Creek when a 50-house retirement village was proposed for the land opposite Bellbird Car Park.
Despite both concerns of the land at 375 Swansea Road being a floodplain and in direct connection to Olinda Creek’s platypus population, the council voted in favour of the proposal, approving the build.
“This is an inappropriate development on a floodplain for a retirement village, and with three lifestyle villages already in Lilydale with current vacancies on appropriate sites, this is not the right thing to do to protect our vulnerable community,” objector Kim-Maree said at the Tuesday 14 May council meeting.
Come June, the long awaited stormwater management plan had been released as a draft for community consultation.
“There’s been a definite shift in the council’s thinking around the importance of drainage and flooding over the past 12 months,” then councillor Andrew Fullagar said.
The 10 year plan looked to not only mitigate the flood risk but “protect and maintain the natural water cycle and health of waterways from urban development impacts” across the whole municipality.
By July, Lilydale and the rest of the Yarra Ranges was once again inundated with flood waters.
The rain event which increased from Monday 15 July through to the early hours of Tuesday morning, Lilydale SES unit controller Shaun Caulfield said, saw sharp bursts of heavy rainfall in specific locations.
“With the changes in our weather patterns, we’re not having more rain, we’re just having it in shorter bursts which seems to be the pattern of the last couple of years,” he said.
“So our average rainfall for the year might be a very similar amount but we seem to be getting it on less days.
“A lot of the rain was focused over the Ferny Creek, Kallista, Olinda and Mount Evelyn area.”
The discussion of flood impacts also reached the ability of SES to respond after the October 2022 flood inquiry report was handed down.
It confirmed a lack of funding to the SES, inadequate resources and a changing climate making it increasingly difficult and unpredictable.
“It was good to see those recommendations reflect what we’ve been saying for a long time, which is that SES in Victoria has been grossly underfunded for decades,” Lilydale SES unit controller Shaun Caulfield said.
“So it’s fairly reassuring to see that recognised, that there’s both a gap in the funding for equipment, also the funding for training volunteers, but also in terms of being able to attract and retain new volunteers, as we need to over the course of time.”
Returning to the adoption of the stormwater management plan in August, it was deferred after two objectors, Michelle de Lima and Karen Kestigian, raised concerns about transparency in the plan and the need for immediate assistance for areas that experience flooding.
Speaking at the 27 August council meeting, Ms de Lima outlined multiple items missing from the documentation as well as administrative errors in the reports.
Despite the inaccuracies, Ms de Lima said “the stormwater management plan and policy are progressive and highly important initiatives for the future development of the Yarra Ranges Shire, the state of Victoria and its agencies.”
But she said “as a guiding principle for the next 10 years, it has to be 100 per cent right”.
The plan was given the green light in September.
October brought with it yet another major flood, seeing an estimated 75ml of rain falling per hour, seeing pooling water under the Lilydale Train Station and Beresford and Cave Hill Roads requiring police assistance to direct traffic around flood waters.
The November elections put flooding, drainage and stormwater management at the top of the list for nearly all council candidates, confirming it as their issue of the year, as well as the topic requiring the most discussion in 2025 and beyond.
Flooding and stormwater management will certainly continue to be a heavily talked about topic but 2024 really was a momentous year for enacting change to past practices and the community making a stand for their safety.
