Managing Catchments Homework - 01/06/2015

This report was written for Mackay Regional Council and will determine which of two options (Option 1: increase culvert size or Option 2: create diversion channel) will mitigate inundation at Hicks Road (Windmill Crossing Goosepond). The Mackay Regional Council have advised that the use of the two options must be assessed using the environmental, economic and social criteria.

1.    Discussion:

Windmill crossing is located in North Mackay near the Glenella Goose Ponds (21˚07’41.60”S, 149˚09’29.04”E as shown in Map 1) and is known to be an area affected by inundation.

Map 1:                        Windmill Crossing

There is a large amount of people that live in this area and are vulnerable to this flooding. In 2008, 886 residential properties surrounding the Goose Ponds were inundated.

Managing Catchments Homework - 04/06/2015

2.    Conclusion

The option that should be adopted to mitigate the amount of flooding in the Glenella Gooseponds area is Option 2.

This is because Option 2 has greater aspects of strengths against Option 1 and Option 1 has greater aspects of weaknesses against Option 2. This is displayed in Table 3 and Table 4 above in the discussion. Option 1 has a significant impact on the public (social impacts) as the construction to raise ‘Hicks Road’ would take a longer period of time to complete than Option 2 (diversion channel). There is a sincere amount of vehicles that cross/use ‘Hicks Road’ daily. This is shown in ‘Vehicle Type Study 1’ in Table 5 below:

Table 5:                                         Vehicle Type Study 1

North – South	Hicks Road
Vehicle Type	Instances
Human powered	1
Motorbike	3
Car	19
4WD	18
Truck	0
Private Bus	1
Public Bus	0

The average annual amount of vehicles that cross ‘Hicks Road’ are found below:

Therefore the will be roughly 919800 cars each year travelling across ‘Hicks Road’.