FRIENDS of Nyah Vinifera Park Inc have been voicing their concerns about local floodplain projects for the past nine years.
Over the next few weeks, they plan to keep up the fight in person.
A roundtable meeting focusing on the Vinifera, Nyah and Burra Creek floodplain restoration projects started on Thursday in Swan Hill, and will ultimately help decide if the projects will go ahead.
Lower Murray Water has proposed a number of works to the Nyah-Vinifera Park area under the Victorian Murray Floodplain Restoration Project, including the construction of channels, regulators, containment blocks, drop structures and spillways, with the aim to return the 1241 hectares of high ecological value floodplain to a more natural flooding regime.
The roundtable will explore key issues identified from the exhibited environment report, draft planning scheme amendment and a number of submissions.
It will hear from LMW, traditional custodians, key agencies and those who wish to speak about their submissions.
Friends of Nyah Vinifera Park chair Jacquie Kelly said it felt like a “Sampson and Goliath situation”.
“They are the umpire for their own game,” Dr Kelly told The Guardian.
“This seems like a pretty complex, convoluted and unfair process for us as a community group because it is very legalistic.
“The documentation we have been expected to wade through has been prolific, so as volunteers it has been pretty intimidating really.
“It’s one of these government processes where the trick is to confound and fatigue the community so that they just give up – just push so much information and documents and complex wording and legalistic speak and complex processes to the community that they go, ‘oh I can’t do this, I’m not up for this’.”
While she was a little unsure exactly how the roundtable meeting would go, Dr Kelly believed it was positive that it was being held in person, and that her and the Friends of Nyah Vinifera Park committee would get the chance to have their say.
“We are confident that we know our stuff, that we know the issues, and even though it seems like a fait accompli that there is no stopping these projects, we are showing goodwill by participating, we are showing trust in the Victorian Government’s environmental credentials, that justice will prevail, and these risky, expensive, destructive, experimental projects will not pass this assessment,” she said.
“We will be appealing to the committee members who are going to sit that these are unnecessary, they will not achieve the environmental outcomes that they are claiming, and that they will cause irreversible damage to the floodplain hydrology and the natural and cultural landscape, which essentially is damaging our local conservation park and our recreational and tourism asset.”
After the roundtable is finished, the appointed Victorian Murray Floodplain Restoration Project Standing Inquiry and Advisory Committee is required to write a report with recommendations and advice to the Minister for Planning, Sonya Kilkenny, within 30 business days.
The committee’s advice will be used to inform the statutory decisions required for the projects.
It was up to the Minister for Planning whether the report would be made available to the public.
The roundtable allowed participants to be present and the public to observe either physically at the venue or to join via Zoom video conference.
It started at The Grain Shed on Thursday and was expected to run for six days across three weeks, finishing on Wednesday, April 23.
For more information, visit engage.vic.gov.au/VMFRP-SIAC-ER-Central
