WORK is finally under way to fix the drainage woes in Beaudesert CBD.
The town centre last flooded on February 19 when all it took was a brief summer downpour to send shopkeepers reaching for the sandbags and mops.
The Beaudesert Bulletin questioned Council over when it would start work to fix the drainage and why the project, due to be finished in mid-2023, had not started yet.
Council gave the following response.
“The next phase of Scenic Rim Regional Council’s multi-stage revitalisation of the Beaudesert Town Centre has begun with drainage works on Short Street and the Gateway Precinct parklands,” a Council spokesperson said.
“Following extensive rain and flooding in Beaudesert in 2021 and 2022, Council’s engineers carried out a comprehensive assessment of Short Street to ensure the scope for this stage of Beaudesert’s revitalisation remained accurate and feasible.
“Additional geotechnical investigations revealed that the foundation beneath Short Street was of an extremely poor quality and exacerbated by the rain and flooding requiring the excavation and rebuild of the road subgrade to enable the installation of new stormwater infrastructure.
“The Short Street drainage project will address a longstanding issue, delivering major drainage improvements which are vital to businesses in the Beaudesert town centre and the safety of the community during major rain events.”
Beaudesert CBD’s long-running drainage issues have local business owners sick of mopping muddy floodwater out of their shopfronts and being on tenterhooks whenever it rains.
On December 8, 2021, shops were inundated when up to 100m in an hour caused shock flooding in what several CBD shopkeepers described as the worst they had seen.
In 2022 the Bulletin reported flood-affected businesses were cautiously optimistic about drainage upgrades due to be completed by the end of the 2022-2023 financial year.
Now, as the blown-out project finally gets under way, business just want it all to be over.
“I just want to be able to put things on the floor in our office knowing it won’t flood. We have to keep everything up because it’s not safe to leave anything on the floor,” said Keer Moriarty from Scenic Rim Media.
“I don’t understand why it’s taken so long for them to fix this. We should be able to run a business in the CBD without having to worry about flooding.”
