Engineer who moved Australian town after fatal flood says managed retreat 'well worth the price to pay' – Newshub

Watch: Engineer who moved Australian town after fatal flood says managed retreat "well worth the price to pay". Credits: Video – AM; Images – AM
A man who helped move an entire Australian town following severe floods believes if people are at repeated risk, they should relocate.
The Australian town of Grantham in Queensland was severely damaged by huge flash flooding that left 12 people dead and houses and other buildings destroyed in 2011, according to the Grantham Floods Commission of Inquiry. 
Following the flooding, environmental engineer Jamie Simmonds assisted with shifting the town to higher ground to prevent future damaging floods. 
He told AM on Wednesday moving an entire town might seem scary to some people, but he believes it’s worth it over the long term.  
"You’ve got to compare the costs … with the recovery efforts, the emergency response efforts of frequent floods, and then of course, the social and mental well-being of people who are consistently put in harm’s way. That can devastate people for a lifetime," he told AM co-host Ryan Bridge.  
"The cost to the communities is huge, so I think it’s well worth the price to pay upfront and then you avoid all those costs for the next 50 years, 100 years, whatever it may be."
A new estate was built, which people were sceptical about, but they slowly came around to the idea. 
"It was a voluntary relocation, nobody had to do it, but the vast majority of people in Grantham took up the land swap and now if you go out to Grantham today, it’s a quiet little town safe from the flood," he said. 
"There are still people that live in the floodplain, but the majority live up on the hill and I think they’ve suffered a number of floods since then, but the damage has been minimal because people just aren’t there." 
Simmonds said the new houses were built on higher ground within two years of the devastating floods.  
"Over the next year, there were 120 allotments built in the new estate and every one of them was taken up by a resident. So people built their homes in their own time, but most were completed within two years or so," he said. 
He told AM the key to getting people onboard was making a decision quickly, so the flooding was still fresh in people’s minds. 
"People tend to make decisions that may not be in their long-term interest. People might rebuild in the floodplain and of course, that doesn’t sit well over the years when it starts to rain," Simmonds explained. 
"So moving quickly allowed people to fit into the program and gave them a solution, gave them hope that things will be better tomorrow and that’s all we really did." 
Managed retreat has been in the headlines lately following Cyclone Gabrielle, which devastated the upper North Island and has so far left 11 people dead. 
It’s something that could cost a fortune. One estimate is that $100 billion worth of homes around the country are at risk of flooding, affecting about 675,000 people – that’s one in seven New Zealanders.
The price tag is eyewatering – it could end up costing 1 percent of GDP – that’s currently $3.75 billion a year – for the next few decades.
Newshub understands the Climate Change Minister has asked for advice on how to speed the plan up to introduce legislation before the election.
"We are going to find out this year because it is currently unclear what the division of responsibility and the cost is," James Shaw said. 
"The National Party is prepared to sit down and have a sensible conversation because of the complexity of it," said National’s climate change spokesperson Todd Muller.
Watch the full interview with Jamie Simmonds above. 

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