Bank damage has erosion in spotlight

Bank erosion has come to town, ripping out soil along Barham’s Riverside Park and threatening the stability of a much-loved boardwalk.

For some locals the sight of excavators piling down rip-rap rock is a sign of the times.

Erosion has been an ongoing issue in the area, with Murray River Council identifying action was needed in mid-2020, but a lack of funding halted plans.

“However, with the recent rise in water levels on the Murray River at Barham, more erosion and undercutting has been observed threatening the riverside infrastructures, including the pylons which support the Barham Boardwalk,” council said.

“As a result, the council appointed a contractor to commence emergency works.”

Barham Boardwalk Committee chair Colin Membrey said erosion has been “exceptionally bad” during the past two to three years.

“We started building the boardwalk in 2009. We could have never known the MDBA (Murray-Darling Basin Authority) was going to hold the river at such low rates for so long,” Mr Membrey said.

“This has allowed boat wash to dig into parts of the bank normally protected.

“This isn’t new. If you jump in a boat you’ll find kilometres of cutouts and collapsing banks up and down the river.”

Upstream landowner Graeme Padgett has been trying to bring attention to the issue for years.

“The riverbank has been disappearing the last five years,” Mr Padgett said.

“The government keeps running the river high, then they drop it down and it sucks everything in. They press a button in Canberra and everything changes.

“You can go to uni for three years and the government will listen to you, but live on the river all your life and they don’t care what you say.”

When asked about the loss of bank stability along the Murray River, the MDBA said it was aware of the “real and growing concern” regarding erosion.

“River levels in the Murray are always fluctuating and they fluctuate for many reasons,” an MDBA spokesperson said.

“At the moment river levels are quite high due to the unregulated flows that have entered the river as a result of rainfall.”

The Commonwealth Environmental Water Office “shares community concerns” regarding riverbank erosion.

“This is a complex issue as the cause of erosion often differs along a river and can result from a combination of factors like river regulation, floods, land use change and boat wash,” a CEWO spokesperson said.

Mr Padgett said these explanations were “total bloody wack”.

“I’ve lived where I am outside Strathmerton for 20 years and I pump water straight from the river to grow a bit of hay,” he said.

“The bank has disappeared five metres and that’s all in the last five years.

“That’s because they were flooding the environment during those dry years.”

In 2012 the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was introduced, designed to create a market for water and deliver more for the environment.

This market has allowed anyone to buy water, and for corporations backed by money to confidently establish water-intensive operations in the basin — a prime example being almond plantations.

As the amount of water being both bought and diverted to the environment continues to grow, farmers and landowners such as Mr Padgett are increasingly concerned about the basin plan putting too much strain on the river, subjecting it to more extreme fast flows when water is needed and leaving the river with less when the taps are closed.

“In the old days the levies and the banks weren’t steep. When there was a lot of rain the river came up and the water spilled out for miles,” Mr Padgett said. “The erosion isn’t natural. Not at all.”

Back in Barham, the town’s riverbanks are largely unaffected by erosion thanks to human intervention.

Several years ago the former Wakool Shire Council completed a bank restoration project, only skipping over one small section.

It is this small section now undergoing emergency stabilisation work.