Residents of Mooroopna are preparing for and are in the middle of a lengthy clean-up effort, despite floodwater still covering a number of major roads across the township.
Greater Shepparton City Council held a flood recovery community information forum at Mooroopna Westside Arts Centre on Sunday night, giving residents an insight into how its flood recovery will proceed.
A significant talking point of the night revolved around the situation on Mooroopna’s Lenne St, which remains covered by floodwater and a number of its residents isolated.
Watt Road remains closed due to flooding between McLennan St and Riverview Dr, while Toolamba Rd is also closed due to flooding between McLennan St and Pyke Rd.
Howe St is also closed due to the flooding on Toolamba Rd and McLennan St, with significant parts of Lenne St cut off.
ICC incident controller Ray Jasper said a significant pumping operation had continued in Mooroopna on Sunday and noted authorities were looking to pump water through the existing penstock infrastructure (enclosed pipes) to reduce the water level around town.
“We are pumping a fair bit of water out of Toolamba and Lenne St, we have been pumping this for a couple of days,” Mr Jasper said.
“We’ve got two pumps there, and we’ll be seeing if we can open the penstocks to release the water as well.”
A number of Lenne St residents expressed concerns to the panel, with one resident claiming they had been told by emergency services it would take up to a month before their property would be accessible again.
Greater Shepparton City Council chief executive Peter Harriott told residents it may take up to five days for water to be pumped from Mooroopna’s streets, depending on rainfall in the coming days.
“It will depend on how much rain is coming, that could add to it, and it depends on how these pumps will currently work,” Mr Harriott said.
“We’re observing this on an hourly basis, by observation, the capacity of those pumps and how far we’ve seen the water go down, our best guess is around five days.”
Because of this, the sewerage systems across Mooroopna remain affected.
Daniel Flanagan, general manager of operations at Goulburn Valley Water said a number of pump stations are offline or not functioning correctly.
“We’re now operating back on the normal pump station, it’s allowing us to clear a big portion of the sewer within Mooroopna, but we obviously still have issues in the south-west area, south of the Midland Highway and west of Toolamba,” Mr Flanagan said.
“We have a pump station there that remains underwater and we are unable to access, residents within that area will experience their sewer being slow to drain, it might be gurgling, it will get away but it will be very slow.”
Mr Jasper touched on expected rainfall over the next few days, and reminded residents as clean-up may commence, an emergency warning remains in place.
“We’re watching the weather tomorrow and expecting 20mm of rain, the concern we’ve got is the thunderstorm activity,” Mr Jasper said.
“If thunderstorms fall in any of the Goulburn catchment above Shepparton-Mooroopna in the coming days, you may see a rise in the river.”
Kerbisde bin collection has recommenced, and council will continue limited kerbside flood waste collection from naturestrips tomorrow.
Collections commenced on Saturday with over 40 loads collected from Murchison and Mooroopna.