The Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, says there is a glaring oversight in the Allan Labor government’s latest announcement on urgent road repairs across regional Victoria.
Mr Walsh says McKenzie Rd, the vital artery which links Echuca and Kyabram, doesn’t need repair, it needs to be returned to its original height before it causes another flooding disaster.
He says after the 2022 floods VicRoads engineers turned a stretch of McKenzie Rd into an accidental levee bank despite warnings from surrounding landowners.
“An extended stretch of the road was replaced but is now 200mm higher than it was before 2022 and even then it played a damaging role in turning local farmland into an inland ocean,” Mr Walsh explains.
“When VicRoads turned up in 2023 to fix the road everyone got excited because it looked as though they were going to get something done right for a change – but it didn’t happen,” he says.
“Instead, the locals finished up with an unwanted levee bank disguised as a major roadway and they were not happy – and still aren’t.
“Last year I met with dairy farmer Paul Ford, whose property borders McKenzie Rd. He says he knows he is on a floodplain, and he will deal with that.
But what he is not prepared to live with, he says, is seeing his work destroyed by Regional Roads Victoria decision makers who “seem oblivious” to what they have done.
“While 2011 was bad, it was nowhere near what we went through in 2022 – we lost 95 per cent of our property, 100 per cent of our fodder crops were destroyed, the vetch went rotten and the sub-clovers drowned,” Mr Ford says.
“So much water came through once it had devastated Rochester there was nothing we could do to mitigate,” he says.
“But it still had somewhere to go, but the next flood to come through won’t be going anywhere because of McKenzie Rd, it will be in our backyard for weeks, maybe months.”
Near neighbour Adam Whipp is another who has also been telling anyone and everyone who will listen that VicRoads has built a timebomb and local farmers will be the victims.