Meeting papers

                    Noosa Landcare - Nature Based Solutions for a Resilient Upper Pinbarren Creek Catchment
                                                        Further justification for partial funding
The recommendation is to part-fund the grant proposal - Nature Based Solutions for a Resilient Upper Pinbarren Creek Catchment $28,364.00 – offering only
$18,558.00. The project is to undertake a geomorphic assessment and high level management strategy for upper Pinbarren Creek, upstream of Binalong
Road.

There are many locations across the shire where the catchment characteristics and the road design has resulted in significant flood damage to the creek bed,
riparian vegetation, surrounding property and infrastructure.

Upper Pinbarren Creek Road will continued to be compromised in the future and this has been exacerbated by the way the road has been constructed,
repaired after floods, and the creek realignment. The 2022 floods caused major road and waterway damage, resulting in some properties being isolated due
to the flood for multiple days and important native vegetation along the river bank being lost.

“The mostly cleared and very steep catchment has had ongoing issues with erosion caused by climate change exacerbated high rainfall events. This has led
to instream erosion, difficulty maintaining built road infrastructure and degradation of agricultural soils” (Noosa Landcare).

The project proposal provides an opportunity to make a difference to Council’s approach to managing rural roads in close proximity to waterways. Civil ops
needed to spend $5000 to have Landcare reinstate trees that were cleared as part of Council flood maintenance work.

There has also been discussion on the creation of a Noosa specific manual for how to address rural road design and post flood remediation of roadsides with
waterways health and damage avoidance in mind. This project takes a scientific approach to help inform this education and awareness tool.

The project will model and assess the sub-catchment characteristics and geomorphology to help inform onground repair and restoration and to help identify
measures to improve resilience for flood risk.

The Queensland River Rehabilitation Management Guideline provides a design approach to support rehabilitation projects. It is underpinned by the need to
link our understanding of biophysical components of the catchment with aquatic/riparian ecosystems. It makes the following statement:

“Reacting rather than responding to such events (e.g. a large flood event), can lead to costly interventions that may not have been needed or that have
unintended consequences. A proactive alternative is to pre-plan using the Framework so that relevant information and data is available to inform disaster
management responses. A triage approach, where issues are identified, ranked and addressed based on risk, can be applied after a disaster event. This
information can also be used to develop a longer-term plan that prevents reoccurrence and improves resilience to future events.”

Having a more proactive approach and clearer management measures would save Council in damage costs as floods increasingly threaten infrastructure due
to climate driven extreme rain events. Best practice civil operations practices and proactive and targeted ecosystem restoration can influence the
sustainability of our infrastructure and environmental assets.




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