Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has said the public sector has started looking at ways to protect Rochester from future extreme flooding events, including potential upgrades to the weir at Lake Eppalock.
Mr Andrews, speaking in Victorian Parliament when it met briefly at the end of last year, spoke in reply to a question from Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh.
Mr Walsh said more than 90 per cent of homes were flood damaged and the community was “traumatised” by two extreme floods in 11 years “and needs confidence that the government is doing all that it can to mitigate future extreme flooding events”.
“Lake Eppalock near Rochester is a fixed-crest weir with no capacity to pre-release sufficient water to protect Rochester from extreme flooding,” Mr Walsh said, contrasting the dam wall to those at Lakes Hume and Eildon.
“On behalf of the Rochester community, will the government provide funding for a feasibility study for the reconfiguration of the Eppalock dam wall to allow for the effective pre-release of water to protect the town against future extreme flooding events?”
Mr Andrews said reviews had begun into flood mitigation and recovery across the region.
“(We’re looking) at what might be able to be done in the future to mitigate and to make it less likely that with that sort of record rainfall we would have a similar inundation of so many homes and so many businesses,” Mr Andrews said.
“That is a more complex piece of work than I think we can do justice to today.”
Mr Andrews said the government was committed to standing with residents and businesses in Rochester.
“What I would say is this: let us be really clear if we are going to protect Rochester, if we going to rebuild Rochester and if we are going to truly support those businesses, those families and that community, then their voices have to be heard in whatever mitigation work is done,” he said.
“Whatever work is done as a result of this flood event needs to be driven by that community and my commitment is to deliver exactly that.”
He thanked Mr Walsh for the “constructive way” he had worked with the government on flood recovery.
Victorian Emergency Services Minister Jaclyn Symes also paid tribute to communities “right across Victoria” facing challenges, including ongoing clean-up.
“I have seen first-hand how resilient these communities are – resilience where you would expect resilience to be gone,” she said.
“I did want to give a shout-out to people in Rochester.
“The women at the neighbourhood house there were phenomenal – Amanda, Jane, Cate and Hannah – standing up for that community, pulling things together in a role that was not necessarily part of their job description.
“But the community just really needed that support, and those women have been phenomenal.”