Richmond Shire Council's new flood cameras expected to be installed by Christmas

Richmond Shire Council has successfully obtained $250,000 through Local Roads Community Infrastructure Program to replace flood cameras that were switched off by DIT AgTech in November 2022 after issues with the flood monitoring software.

Council Chief Executive Officer Peter Bennett said they had conducted a trial of new flood monitoring system with a company called Barco in January, but it did not suit their needs.

"Council gave a purchase order to Aquamonix in August to replace the old cameras and install an additional four cameras," Mr Bennett said.

"We found out that both Flinders and McKinlay Shire councils decided to go with Aquamonix so we set up a meeting with them and went through our needs and they came up with a viable solution for us.

"These will be in place by Christmas but not firm dates as yet."

While this process has taken close to 12 months, Mr Bennett said Council wanted to get this product right the first time.

"We have done testing on the equipment, proposed four new locations in addition to the eight old locations," he said.

"We are also building a new disaster page on the website that will feature all these cameras and will provide up to date reports on the road network and any other hazards that may be occurring within the shire.

"These cameras are being built right now and will be in before the wet season."

During the wet season, residents access flood camera feeds online to get up to date information on road closures and flooding after heavy rain events.

"Over the wet season the flood camera page is the highest trafficked page on Council's website with over 1,000 views per day.

"People want to see where it has rained and if the road is still passable. This is about safety first and foremost and the public rely on Council to inform them of road conditions every day so they can decide if they can come to town, get deliveries to their property and in the event of an emergency will the ambulance be able to crossing these floodways or is a chopper needed."

Without the cameras installed, Council staff had inspected crossings manually.

"The cameras will take photos every three hours to show the state of these 12 crossings and to see if they are passable. This saves Council a lot of time by not having to drive to these locations to check the crossing," Mr Bennett said.

"Some of these cameras are over 100km from town so its saves lots of travel time and provides real time footage. We can also take pictures from the camera manually if we want to see the conditions right now. This will be useful if we see a large storm on the weather RADAR and want to make sure it hasn't flooded a road."