A team of eight people have pored through 1000 submissions as part of Logan City Council’s flood mapping review.
And although only a quarter of the way through the total number of submissions, the team has identified more than 4000 individual issues which have been raised by residents.
Council has commissioned a third independent review into the process of flood mapping, which includes the type of information which should be made publicly available via the city’s flood portal.
Residents have been highly critical of current maps which include predicted levels of a catastrophic flood which might only happen once in every 500 years.
Mayor Jon Raven agrees this information is necessary for town planners who are tasked with keeping the city safe.
But he said people were stressed about the information contained in the flood portal, and the impact this might – perceived or otherwise – be having on insurance prices and home valuations.
“Our flood maps have been peer reviewed twice and all the engineers said ‘yep, it’s all good’,” Cr Raven said.
“It blows my mind that nobody thought to question the detail.”
Council will this week be asking people what they want displayed in the flood portal.
“The most relevant information needs to be the quickest to find, but we won’t make any changes until our community has told us which option they prefer,” Cr Raven said.
A survey provides three options:
- A map showing a 1% chance of flooding, which is used by council to determine where to build houses;
- Includes a map that shows a 0.2% chance of flooding – an extreme weather event not yet experienced in Logan;
- A revamped version of the current portal which includes a 1:2000 year flood.
Cr Raven said he wanted to see a common-sense approach which enabled people to use their land to best suit their lifestyle.
This would almost certainly remove the 1:2000 overlay from current flood mapping, although Cr Raven would not be drawn on how he thought either public consultation or the findings of the independent review would resolve.
He did however, say state planning minister Jarrod Bleijie was open to a review of current laws to enable simplicity of published material.
Of the 4000 issues already identified by council’s review team, most are being allocated to a response which will be sent out when the review is finished.
They are also being pinned to eight separate policy areas of council, and address issues raised at townhall meetings last year.
These include how to manage dry creeks, highflow areas and industrial zones.
Due to the volume of work, council is likely to employ more people into the review team.
Cr Raven said Moreton and Ipswich had similar flood mapping models to that of Logan.
But he insisted it was important to ensure the language was right.
“This needs to be presented in a way that people understand,” he said.
“The language used by engineers doesn’t always translate the same way you or I might understand it, so it’s important to get this right.”
Logan Ratepayers Association last month hosted a town hall-style meeting where they presented “flaws” in the flood mapping model.
The association’s president Brett Raguse wants the current flood mapping scrapped.
