It will take several years for roads to be repaired and agricultural areas to recover across the Scenic Rim following recent floods.
While the Scenic Rim didn’t have as many residential properties experience flooding compared to previous years, the flood impact has been devastating on the local road network and agriculture sector.
Scenic Rim Mayor Greg Christensen says hundreds of local roads were impacted.
Mayor Christensen says it will take two years for road repairs to be carried out.
“We haven’t finished yet calculating Council’s impact.
“Currently we’re over 800 damage points on Council road network alone and still counting.
“At the moment, we’re still finding more damage.”
Mayor Christensen says the damage was diverse, but fairly widespread across the region.
“In the east of the region, we saw a whole section of an access road to a suburb of 16 residences, where it collapsed about a metre off the side of Tamborine Mountain.
“At Illinbah, the rising of the floodwater from a small catchment washed away the side track to a bridge replacement program and left that community cut off for more than a week.
“At the back of Kalbar, we had to close a section of road there because we went from a little bit of wash to on the side of the road, to a two metre deep trench that made the road totally unsafe to use.”
Mayor Christensen says the flood also significantly impacted the local agriculture sector.
“We’ve seen a lot of impact in our agricultural areas with losses of crop, either from overland flow or from inundation, that has destroyed crops and in some areas, it will be a six to seven year recovery, because they’ve lost valuable top soil and will have to start re-building.
“There are some operators that are more than a million dollars each out of pocket.”
If you have been financially impacted by flooding and need assistance, access the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment here.
