It's been just over a year since flooding inundated dozens of homes in the outback New South Wales town of Menindee. Water New South Wales has compiled a review of its own performance during the disaster. It found there were appropriate systems in place to operate water storages during flooding, but the findings are being questioned.
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00:00 Entering his guest accommodation for the first time, 76-year-old Paul Gross assesses the
00:07 damage.
00:10 "We've put over new floors on that in there."
00:12 Walls inside and out still plastered with mud, they're painful reminders of last year's
00:17 Menindee flood. Paul's property was one of dozens inundated by an overflowing Darling
00:23 River.
00:24 "That old bucket now, the walls, hard to see ten years of working. It's all gone, you
00:29 know, overnight. Bloody devastating. That was a $7000 kitchen we'd just done in here."
00:35 He was lucky to escape a rapidly rising river.
00:38 "It came as a shock to me, it was four o'clock in the morning, and the grandson got out to
00:42 go to the toilet and he yelled out popularly, 'and a metre of water!'"
00:46 Water NSW oversaw control of the Menindee Lakes upstream during the flood.
00:52 "The lakes had reached capacity, the surrounding area had reached capacity. We were seeing
00:56 a volume of water the equivalent of 20 Sydney Harbours making its way across the landscape."
01:01 Their decision making has formed part of a recent review.
01:04 "The report confirmed that while our actions reduced the severity of the flooding in the
01:09 immediate area, our communications could have been done better."
01:12 Graham McCrabb believes the report glosses over a number of failures.
01:16 "We had people that didn't realise there was water rising or coming through town until
01:21 it actually arrived in their house. The notification was terrible."
01:23 As early as January 2022, locals were raising concerns about large volumes of water coming
01:30 down the Darling.
01:31 "The community were trying to have meetings and raise the issue of airspace in the lakes
01:34 through May, June, July. It just didn't happen."
01:36 "Whatever they'd done was wrong. I think there's room for improvement on managing the water."
01:41 While his home won't ever be the same, Paul Gross is hopeful history won't repeat itself
01:47 for future floods.
01:48 [BLANK_AUDIO]