Rain, rain go away

Published on 09 March 2022

During this severe weather period, Council’s crews are hard at work monitoring the safety of our roads, detention basins and working with the SES to provide sandbags and traffic control for residents’ safety. 

While, so far our region has experienced moderate levels of flooding; there were reports of impacts and damage to road infrastructure, and evacuation orders issued to residents in parts of Lansvale and Smithfield most prone to flooding. 

Council crews worked hard into the evenings and early hours to monitor our roads, emergency-fill potholes and provide traffic control where required; and to ensure that our catchment infrastructure, such as creeks and detention basins were coping with the significant amount of rainfall. We also worked closely with the Fairfield State Emergency Service (SES) unit; providing them with flood sacks and 17 tonne of sand to make sandbags.

Creeks in Fairfield City have a long history of flooding.  Due to the large number of creeks and low-lying lands, more than a quarter of our City can be impacted by flooding during significant rainfall.

Council has undergone extensive flood mitigation works since the 1980s to keep our community safe; including more than 20 detention basins, waterway improvements and one of the largest house raising programs in the state. 

This past week has shown us how crucial detention basins are when it comes to flood prevention, and the importance of keeping them maintained. During extreme rain events, detention basins collect rainwater and slowly release it into our creek system, which allows them more time to empty when they are overwhelmed and overflowing. 

Some of our major sports fields like Stockdale Reserve in Abbotsbury, Powhatan Reserve in Greenfield Park, and Bosnjak Oval in Edensor Park double up as detention basins. They may appear to be flooded, but this is what they are designed to do – collect the bulk of the rainwater and slowly redirect it into our creeks.

Council regularly inspects these systems to ensure they are performing at their optimum, and are scheduled to undertake upgrade works to the Fairfield Golf Course Detention Basin in Prairiewood in coming months. The works are necessary due to the basin’s age and design, to ensure it can continue to do its job of holding water to prevent flooding to surrounding homes, keeping the community safe. 

Thank you to the Fairfield SES unit and Council staff for their emergency response efforts, and thank you to our residents for heeding to safety advice and keeping out of harm’s way.

As the rain begins to ease, Council will focus its efforts on restoring local roads including permanently patching potholes when the roads are dry. While our crews do their best to spot potholes, they are easy to miss, so I encourage you to help us by reporting potholes at www.fairfieldcity.nsw.gov.au/RoadMaintenance.