Geurie residents call on Dubbo Regional Council to fix kerb and guttering

To them it's simple - fix the guttering and kerbs along the road.

Resident Lionel Lodding says he gets a lot of water coming down from Geurie Bowling Club that runs across the road, through his neighbours place and into his own.

"It doesn't go down the table drain, it runs right across our front yard and hits the garden on the side of our house," he said.

"We've got a big brick garden, so whenever water hits that it runs out through the backyard, across the patio and pools near the back fence."

This leaves Mr Lodding with at least eight inches of water in his backyard every time there is a downpour of rain.

"The rain also runs through our property and into my next door neighbour's place and then it ends up filling up his driveway and runs through his shed," he said.

"When he first moved in I said 'don't put anything on the floor, if you have a lot of rain it's going to get wet' and sure enough he got a couple of inches of water through his yard and through his shed."

Mr Lodding said he would love to see the kerb and guttering in Geurie fixed because then at least that would keep "water from the street, on the street".

"At the minute it just runs anywhere," he said.

According to Mr Lodding a "man hole" was put in one of the table drains along his street, which has now changed the water course.

"Instead of water running down the table drain on the corner it instead runs diagonally across the road and runs through my neighbours house and through his shed, so he's not real impressed either," he said.

"The water doesn't run into the drain, it runs around it and into his house."

At the ordinary meeting of Dubbo Regional Council on March, 23 the council adopted the 2022 Geurie Flood Study and Flood Risk Management Plan.

The Geurie Flood Planning Policy outlines specific requirements for development on land classified as flood prone land and also provides information to residents and prospective developers where properties are likely to be impacted by flood waters.

Councillor Jessica Gough said herself and deputy mayor Richard Ivey had spoken with Geurie residents about their concerns, and the drainage issue was something that was continuously brought up.

"I'm wondering if this management plan will in the long term solve some of the residents problems?" she asked.

DRC manager of Infrastructure and Design, Mark Johnston, said the catchment is quite large for the creek lines that run through Geurie.

"So the modelling methods used to capture the flood risk of those two creeks is quite high level," he said.

"Then the options that we look at look to mitigate the risk of flooding rising from the major creek lines coming through Geurie."

Mr Johnston said because of the high level modelling technique, it doesn't fully capture or analyse the local drainage issues.

"What we've done is certainly capture the community's feedback in terms of the local drainage issues for Geurie and we need to take those areas of concern and do more detailed analysis with a more refined approach and come up with options that might solve those issues," he said.

The flood study and flood risk management plan hasn't been uploaded online yet, but will do so in the coming month.

Mr Lodding said he was disappointed the plan didn't talk about individual residential streets.

"It was more so about the creek out towards the showground because it runs through the showground and they've probably had near to 12 inches of water run through the showground as well," Mr Lodding said.

With all the issues Mr Lodding has had, there have been multiple occasions when he has taken matters into his own hands.

He has had to block up one of the table drains in front of his house because the water doesn't go into the drain and instead rushes out and into Mr Lodding's property.

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"If the water gets under the house it stays wet and the foundations start moving and cracking," he said.

While it doesn't take long for the water to disappear, Mr Lodding said it was mainly the initial heavy downpour that wets everything and there's nowhere for the water to go except into resident's properties.

"The young fella next door had a pool in his backyard, the man that owned the house before him put up a colorbond fence that goes right to the ground, so pretty much all the water that runs through my place ends up in his backyard," Mr Lodding said.

"He would have ended up with a foot of water and it runs out 10 to 15 metres into his yard."

Mr Lodding said even if the council could just come and fix the kerb and guttering that is currently not there, it would be a huge benefit for the community.

"It would just give the water somewhere to run and as for our driveway, I can fix it, but how far do I go before council says 'no that's our land' and you can't touch it," he said.