Pottsville drainage concerns

By Jo Kennett

THERE ARE concerns among some Pottsville residents that a lack of maintenance of local drains and repair of the sea wall could lead to further flooding, after a number of houses flooded last year.

Peter Howell lives in Phillip Street near the boat ramp and ran a large plumbing company for 41 years. He thinks if the drains were cleaned and the water could get away more quickly, there would have been less flooding last year in the big February flood.

“The problem is a lack of maintenance on the drains. They have fixed one or two but mangroves have grown up and blocked the drains leading into the creek,” Peter said.

“I live 300 metres from the mouth of the creek and we had one foot of water in our house and three houses here are still uninhabitable.

“Dozens of houses in Pottsville flooded that have never flooded before.

“The creek mouth was blocked up. It should have been dredged.”

At one drain into the creek on Overall Drive Peter showed The Weekly where he said all the mangroves “effectively damned this entire section.”

“They are only regrowth; they aren’t original trees and they just have to be removed and the weeds on the other side need to be cleaned out,” he said.

“There is a koala passage under Coronation Drive (just east of the ambulance station) and that drain has been full of rubbish since February last year and that contributed greatly to the fact Coronation Drive flooded.”

“Before it went over Overall Drive it went backwards up the canals and around and down Coronation Drive. There was so much water it couldn’t handle the flow.”

Richard Schnell lives in Environmental Drive and said at Edwards Avenue and the end of Buckingham Court water coming from the west can’t get away.

“The water can’t get out because the drains from the canal into the creek are blocked up and all the flooding came from the west (not the creek) because of that,” he said.

“Up past Mackenzie Avenue there is a drain that is totally blocked up.

“All the water that flooded Black Rocks Sports Field got flooded with water from the west because it couldn’t get away.”

In 2020, members of the Pottsville Community Association spent weeks collecting thou- sands of signatures in a petition to the state government to fund half the sea wall repairs after Tweed Shire Council voted to fund half, however the work has yet to be done.

“Three of us have been agitating in the community association that the bar needed to be cleaned out and the rock wall filled, and if they didn’t do it the water level would probably be five feet higher than it was before,” Richard said.

“Bruce Brown, myself and Les Hardy spent over a month getting signatures to do the repairs and we got the money from the state government (Council first agreed to fund half).”

Bruce said in the last few years the creek has gone from being six or seven feet deep to three to four feet deep.

Council’s Manager of Roads and Stormwater Danny Rose said the Mooball Creek Training Walls Repair Project “was one of many that had to be deferred whilst Council focussed on recovery after the February to March 2022 flood event.”

“The project is currently in the detailed design stage and will soon go to tender, with construction to repair the wall expected in late 2023,” he said.

“It should be noted that the repair of the training walls will have little to no impact on the severity or scale of flooding across the Mooball Creek catchment.

“Reports of blocked drains can be made to Council via our Report a Problem service, and these will continue to be investigated and actioned, where necessary.”