Wagga City Council to relaunch feasibility studies into upgrading North Wagga flood levee for one-in-20-year protection

Wagga City Council has officially accepted the final independent peer review of its 2018 flood risk management strategy and will now relaunch plans to give the suburb protection from one-in-20-year floods.

The $53,000 review was commissioned after the North Wagga Residents' Association demanded the suburb receive the same one-in-100-year protection offered by the new levee that shields the Wagga CBD.

Ultimately, the review suggested no major changes to the strategy and North Wagga residents packed the council chamber on Monday night to plead their case for why the flood-prone suburb should be given more substantial protection.

The overarching sentiment among councillors, however, was that there was now more than enough evidence that one-in-20-year protection would be adequate and progress should not be delayed any further.

"The time to act is now, in fact it was probably a few years ago ... further delays or hoping for a report to say something different to what has been said before - I don't see that happening," Cr Dan Hayes said.

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Cr Rod Kendall stressed to the attending residents that the one-in-20-year protection would see the levee heightened about a metre and significantly improve their suburb's ability to handle floods.

"This will give a greater level of protection and I think this is a step forward that needs to happen at the earliest possible time," he said.

"If it had happened when the original levee was constructed we wouldn't have had the angst we had two or three weeks ago - we owe it to our community to get on with this work."

Cr Richard Foley said the one-in-20-year protection was a "happy medium" and Cr Jenny McKinnon said it was "high time" the levee around North Wagga was raised.

Upgrades to the levee have been paused for the past three years while the peer review has been conducted, during which the construction of the $23 million main city levee has been completed.

North Wagga Residents' Association member Michael Friend expressed concerns with the criteria used in the peer review and said it should have considered other levee upgrade options, such as one-in-50-year protection.

The councillors who voted to accept the final peer review were Georgie Davies, Richard Foley, Dan Hayes, Mick Henderson, Rod Kendall, Amelia Parkins and Jenny McKinnon.

Cr Tim Koschel was the only one to vote against accepting the report.

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