There were a lot of small towns devastated by the February 28 2022 megaflood as well as larger cities like Lismore.

Bungawalbin is one such town with many residents helicoptered out of their own or their neighbours' property as floodwaters kept rising from the Richmond River as the town was cut off for 6 weeks.

12 months later Bungawalbin residents are very concerned about their levee wall and its ability to protect the town and that of South Woodburn from future floods.

The 8km levee was built 78 years ago in 1945 to protect Lower Richmond from minor to moderate floods.

Deborah Johnston is leading a community charge so the plight of Bungawalbin residents is heard by the Northern Rivers community including all levels of politics.

Deborah said the levee was topped in 2017, 2021 and in 2022, "It can no longer protect us," she said.

"Concerned Residents and stakeholders met on the Bungwalbin levee last Thursday for 2 reasons:

1. To make sure the community knows the levee that has been protecting us from minor & moderate floods, can no longer do that. Ashley Slapp, Woodburn SES Unit Commander and ex-Commander Jim McCormack (and long-term resident) explained what we can now expect.

2. To get community to lobby Rous County Council, Public Works, State & Federal Governments and political representatives, NRRC and CSIRO to encourage funding of restoring this vital historic infrastructure."

"According to Public Works Interim flood confidence level guidelines the levee is in the worst possible state - class 5 - no confidence.

• It has previously failed in the last 5 years – 3 times
• Has significant erosion, and clay core missing
• Numerous large trees collapsing the levee (walk along 50 m and have a look)

"As it is currently, there is NO CONFIDENCE it can protect us in minor floods. It is not back to pre-flood condition or height. This will mean Bungawalbyn, Swan Bay and Woodburn will be flooded a lot sooner. It will no longer take a major flood to flood us. It will mean the evacuation route of Bungawalbyn Whiporie Road will be cut off a lot sooner."

Deborah explained that Rous County Council has applied for several grants and has been rejected on some already. The levee grant is for URBAN levees only. Even though this levee also protects the southern end of Woodburn village, it is not considered urban. Rous had the opportunity to fix the levee to pre-flood condition under the emergency funding.

She has a quote from Rous County Council “Emergency period lasts for 3 months after the disaster. For the Feb 22 floods, this emergency period was extended to late January 2023. Within the constraints of the time available, wet ground limiting access for a long time, limited availability of suitable contractors and a large number of damaged flood mitigation assets, we returned the levee to as close to its pre-flood condition as we were able to under this emergency period funding. We are able to continue to access funding for levee repairs up to 2 years after the disaster date, but to do this we have to gain approval from Public Works on the scope of work and costs before commencing works.”

"The emergency funding period has lapsed. Rous were unable to complete the work within the required 12-month period as Bungawalbin was too wet to access (still under flood water until mid-April 2022, not accessible until October), and by the time they could, all of the available machinery to the Northern Rivers had been contracted out."

"Both of these matters are State funding matters and with the State Election looming, these technicalities could be revoked/amended. We need to do whatever we can to support Rous County Council to fix this essential historic flood mitigation asset. Make your vote count. All 4 of the Clarence candidates are aware of the condition of the levee and what needs to happen. Leon Ankersmit - Labor, Debrah Novak - Independent, Richie Williamson - Nationals, and Greg Clancy - Greens.

The Lismore App spoke to Rous County Council's Group Manager Planning and Delivery Andrew Logan about the Bungawalbin levee situation.

"I would like to clarify that Deborah has provided that rating of the levee's condition, not anyone else. She's taken some publicly available Public Works guidelines and applied those scores to it. We haven't given it that rating."

"I've said publicly before that it will do the job in a minor to moderate flood. It doesn't mean it might not be damaged as a result of that, because there is a lot of erosion along the creek. So, where the levee is right on top of the creek bank, there is some erosion happening and some undercutting. Another minor to moderate flood could cause some more slumping, which could damage the levy a little bit but we're not concerned about its function in doing what it's supposed to do for those smaller floods."

"Concern remains that if it gets overtopped, particularly the way it is now, then we're concerned about what might happen in that situation. So, that's why we're trying to get some more funding for it."

Who have you applied to for more funding?

"The Disaster Recovery Funding arrangements, which is the normal post-disaster funding that state and federal governments push out. When you were talking about the emergency funding, that's what we've accessed so far. It's around about $50,000 or $60,000 that we've spent under that programme to get the levee back to the height that it was before the flood."

"Then there's the Infrastructure Betterment Fund. That's a state government slash federal government programme that was in the second half of last year, we put in an application for that one, and then the Disaster Ready Fund, another state and federal government fund, and we've put in an application through that one earlier this year."

"We also submitted the project to CSIRO in August last year when they were inviting submissions for that."

What have you heard back from government departments about the funding application?

"The Infrastructure Betterment Fund and the Disaster Ready Fund, we haven't had any feedback on those yet, they're still being assessed. I've got some hope that we might be successful with that and then obviously CSIRO, we weren't successful in the first round of projects but don't see that as an indication that it necessarily won't be successful in the future. We've still got some hope for that.

"The levee directly protects around about a dozen homes, but it also provides evacuation routes for many more homes and then the protection that it provides to a lot of farming land down there is also important."

"We've made the case in every grant application and every opportunity we can that whilst it's in a rural area, it is still providing an important flood mitigation purpose to those communities. I've been really upfront with Deborah in particular that we see it as a priority and we want to get it fixed. The grant funding we're trying to receive is about making it more resilient so that the next time it does overtop there's confidence that it is going to hold and that it's performing the way it's expected to perform in terms of overflowing at a certain point and not eroding the levee."

"So, it's a priority for us to put some more money into it that levee and get it better constructed."

"The erosion along the creek bed and the slumping of the levee into the creek is the funding we applied for to stabilise some of those areas that are obvious right now. The funding isn't about completely rehabilitating every metre of the levee that's adjacent to the creek bed. That's a much bigger job."

"We're focused on repairing what's there and making sure that's stable but also making sure any overtopping events in the future are better controlled and the levee can bounce back. The levee can survive that overtopping event and then still perform a function if there's a smaller flood a month later, that we don't have a hole in the levee."

"That's the focus. We're not gonna rebuild the levee or relocate it. It's about doing what we can with it where it is."

Nobody likes a waiting game and the town of Bungawalbin and Rous County Council are in that mode. The problem is protecting a dozen homes and the escape routes when the next flood hits means more to the people under threat than it does for those with no threat.