Today I sent a media release to the local paper calling for the return of the automated river height recording station at Forestvale 60km North of Mitchell. Re-Automation of the river height station at Forestvale must be a priority of any incoming council.
The automated station at Forestvale was installed by the then Irrigation and Water Supply to monitor river flows to help calculate the volume of water through the river for use when designing irrigation schemes downstream. There was an extensive network of automatic monitoring sites in a number of the creeks and streams in the area. In the immediate area around Forestvale, there where three automated stations being Maranoa River at Mulkitty, Maranoa River at Forestvale and Merrivale River at Munnaweena plus a manual station at Forestvale as well. Now there are none, they have all been decommissioned or abandoned.
After the decommissioning of the Forest vale automated recording site, river height observations where conducted manually by the manager of Forestvale up until the time that the property was sold around 15 years ago. The new owner does not have a permanent manager in attendance, but a number of temporary employees who come and go as required, therefore, the local knowledge of river conditions is at risk of being lost, and the recordings are not done.
Predicting the recent record flood in Mitchell was made even more difficult by the lack of advance warning from upstream. The only recording station upstream of Mitchell is a manual station at Currawong, about 3 hours of river time upstream from Mitchell. The property owner at Currawong and his family did a mighty job in keeping everyone informed of the river conditions upstream from the town, but above them, there was nothing.
There has been talk of doing something at Forestvale for a long while, but it seems to have fallen through the cracks of the three tiers of government. Council must take a leadership role here and get this problem fixed now.
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