Floods: Adam Giles wanted a lake

By ERWIN CHLANDA

Adam Giles was “absolutely ropable” when the Flood Mitigation Advisory Committee in June 2016 presented its report to him in the government office in Todd Mall.

A member of the committee, Rod Cramer (pictured standing below, 2nd from left), recalls the CLP Chief Minster as saying: “I expected you guys to sign off on a recreation lake.”

Today, during a rain period with a minor flood and the Todd flowing for longer than usual, the region’s most sustained controversy about a life threatening danger remains unresolved after more than three decades.

The quests for flood control have led to a bitter dispute about women's sacred sites north of the Telegraph Station, and the intervention by Federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister Robert Tickner imposing a 20 year moratorium, which expired in July 2012.

Mr Cramer says so far as he knows none of the committee’s recommendations have been accepted by successive governments.

He says they were based on an all-or-none principle.

(The Alice Springs News has asked the current government: Which, if any, of the Flood Mitigation Advisory Committee recommendations have been adopted? We have also left a message for Adam Giles on LinkedIn.)

The committee’s chairman was the then Mayor Damien Ryan (seated, at right), now having re-surfaced as a town councillor.

Another member, Michael Sitzler (standing, at right), part-owns the multi-storey residential building, now sandbagged (pictured), leased to the NT Department of Health, whose underground car park was rendered useless by the flood this month.

Mr Cramer says it was accepted by the whole committee that a lake would just have filled up with sand.

However, retention devices would work, as they do on many cattle stations, slowing the flow of the water, keeping it in place for longer.

He says public servants tampered with the report, focussing on keeping town drains clean.

“This is useless, with infinitesimal benefit. It has nothing to do with people’s houses being flooded.”

However, the report is stating what needs to be done, rather than doing it.

For example, Recommendation 1.1 says there should be "detailed topographic data to be acquired for the upstream catchments of the Todd River".

The committee did not obtain that data. Mr Cramer says the committee did not have the funds to do it.

Recommendation 2.3: That an engineering investigation is undertaken to gain the necessary data to determine the technical feasibility and the flow on effects of widening the Todd River bed as it passes through Heavitree Gap.

Meanwhile an overpass through The Gap has been suggested, as has a tunnel through the range, used for the infrequent floods as well as road and rail tracks from the iconic Gap. (Google extensive coverage of flood issues in our Search field.)

PHOTOS from the report. At top: The Mall was under water in the 1988 flood. The other committee members pictured in the group photo are Russel Lynch (seated, at left), Ken Lechleitner (standing, at left) and Jimmy Cocking (standing, 2nd from right).