EXPERTS from the Dutch Disaster Risk Reduction mission from the Kingdom of Netherlands who had been in Fiji on scoping mission in August this year have identified a number of flood mitigation measures to address recurring flood in the Ba and Rakiraki rivers.
The team presented its findings to Minister for Waterways and Environment Dr Mahendra Reddy in Ba yesterday.
The findings consist of a combination of hard and soft measures that need to be implemented in an integrated manner to alleviate flooding issues in the two rivers.
While addressing the stakeholders and the representative of the communities in Ba, Mr Reddy highlighted that upper catchment planning and activities like retaining water in the upper catchment are vital for flood mitigation in the lower catchment and essentially in the floodplains.
He reiterated a multi-layered safety approach was vital for the flood mitigation with nature-based solutions combined with hard and soft measures to alleviate flooding in the Ba and Rakiraki river.
“A hydrodynamic model of the Ba catchment will be used for evaluation of flood mitigation options. The model will include rainfall distribution scenarios and corresponding design floods.
“To address the flood issues for the Ba towns and the surrounding communities, a set of integrated interventions (including conceptual designs) to mitigate floods is recommended which consists of a mix of three individual interventions: dredging upstream and downstream of the Kings Road Bridge, refurbishment of the Kings Road Bridge and floodplain lowering next to the bridge.”
For Rakiraki, the team lauded the river improvement works undertaken by the Ministry of Waterways and Environment in 2018.
The team had earlier visited both Ba and Rakiraki towns, where they engaged with local stakeholders to better understand the situation for informed interventions.
