Future flooding concerns

By Jo Kennett

TAMARIND AVENUE residents in Bogangar experienced catastrophic flooding last year and say urgent action is needed by Tweed Shire Council to help minimise future flooding events.

The Cabarita Lakes Apartment Owners Corporation committee say a new development next to the complex, which was approved in 2019, will “exacerbate flooding in the street and needs to be modified.”

They are also proposing dredging of the mouth of Cudgen Creek and/or building a pipeline from Cudgen Lake to the sea to ease flooding backing up from the lake, with runoff from 4,500 dwellings being built in Kings Forest to be released into Cudgen Creek.

Owners Corporation chairman John Luddington said Council demolished a house on the western end of Tamarind Avenue and put bigger pipes into the street from the canal.

“They think it will take more water off the street, but once we get into a one in a hundred year (Q100) flood level the pipes actually bring water back into the street from the canal, on top of the water that’s caught in the street and is trying to get out through the stormwater system,” he told The Weekly.

“On top of that there is a two-stage development at 79 Tamarind Avenue. Stage one was subdividing lot 12 into two lots, lot 12 and lot 13.

“When they brought the fill in for lot 13, they also brought fill in for the other lots.

“As the lake water rises, it flows around the mounds straight into the back of the houses and into our complex, where before it dispersed out across the low floodplain.”

Residents say fill at the site needs to be removed and any houses need to be built on stilts to allow water to flow underneath.

Cabarita Lakes Apartments managing director Dominique Williams said the area behind the houses is always wet now and mosquitoes are becoming “a huge problem.”

There has also been fill put in for new homes in Willow Avenue which runs off the western end of Tamarind Avenue that homeowners say has added to the problem.

“The site of the new houses used to be a floodplain, but that’s now built up and the stormwater gets trapped, turning the street into a canal,” Ms Williams said.

“With all these mounds of fill, anyone on ground level becomes a lot more vulnerable.”

The new development has approval for 11 houses behind existing homes on the north-west end of Tamarind Avenue.

“National Parks and Crown Lands have done nothing to manage the lake, which has become very choked up, making it difficult for water to flow to the sea and it’s no longer tidal,” Mr Luddington said.

“There used to be a tourist boat from Cudgen Lake to Kingscliff, but now you can’t get a canoe to Kingscliff without having to pick it up and drag it.

“Casuarina’s stormwater runs into Cudgen Creek and Kings Forest’s stormwater will run into the creek, so that has to drain out before the water can drain out of the lake.

“Our biggest worry is that the lake got to 3.8 metres at the peak of the 2022 flood, but a Q100 flood is 2.9 metres and one in five hundred year (Q500) is 3.4 metres.

“Most studies are done under a Q100 so if we prepare for a worst-case scenario and we’ve already gone over that, so the modelling is wrong.

“This should be sounding alarm bells for Council and the community.

“If we are going to allow these developments we need big overflow culverts directly to the ocean so when the lake starts to rise it doesn’t put the community at risk.

“Currently we end up where the sink’s been left with the plug in, and the water is turned on.”

Ms Williams said much of their frustration was that Council was not responding to their concerns.

“We stood here with Council members knee-deep in water when they were bringing fill in prior to the 2022 flood saying: ‘How can you go any further with this development until you can come up with a solution to get the water out?’” she said.

“We’ve written to five government bodies including Council, Crown Lands, National Parks and our state member and we didn’t get one response,” she said.

“We floated the idea of going to the media to encourage Council into action, but we wanted to give them the benefit of