City of Busselton welcomes $7 million funding to prevent coastal flooding

Fighting coastal flooding and building community resilience are the aims of a new project to be rolled out in the City of Busselton under the Federal Preparing Australian Communities Program. The PACP aims to grow the nation’s resilience to natural disasters, with the City progressing towards the protection from coastal flooding by protective built and natural infrastructure, and emergency planning and impact modelling. Federal Member for Forrest Nola Marino welcomed the new $7 million project, funded 50:50 by the Australian Government and the City of Busselton. “As a low-lying coastal city, Busselton is susceptible to local flooding coinciding with storm surges,” she said. “The combination of monitoring, modelling, dune enhancement and levee construction in this project will lift the resilience of the Busselton community.” The project includes four components to progress mitigation of the risk of coastal flooding associated with tropical cyclone storm surges. These components are emergency response, coastal investigations that includes flood modelling, dune resilience works and, as an outcome of the coastal investigations, the provision of coastal flood protection. The emergency response component comprises of the installation of a real-time seabed wave and water level recorder offshore near the Busselton Jetty, allowing for the validation of storm surge models and improvements to real-time storm surge predictions by the Bureau of Meteorology and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services. City Mayor Grant Henley said it was a privilege to partner with the Australian Government on delivering this project. “This project will enhance our emergency response preparedness through early warning systems, and provide physical barriers to protect against storm surges,” he said. In delivering this program, the Australian Government is simultaneously increasing disaster preparedness and resilience, as well as reducing the cost in time and money of recovery following future disasters.