A MEMBER of the original Ovens River Management Board established in 1989 believes the North East Catchment Management Authority (NECMA) has lost its way and is no longer recognising its core responsibilities to manage and maintain priority waterways like the King River.
Local irrigation specialist Bruce Diffey spent three years on the original board, which went on to become NECMA - one of 10 authorities established by the Victorian Government in 1997.
Mr Diffey said the Ovens board's priority was the active protection of public and private assets, but NEMCA had since changed its approach, divesting itself of machinery and a highly skilled workforce and no longer operating with an annual budget for maintenance works.
"With steep rivers you have to do some maintenance and now there is no crew, equipment or funding allocated to undertake these works," he said.
"NECMA gradually dismantled this necessary river maintenance program which has led to an appalling state of management, or rather, no management at all.
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"The staff who remain who were good at river management, now produce reports, with no on-ground works at all."
Mr Diffey said the catchment was unique because of its steep rivers, with the Upper Ovens, Kiewa and King rivers all having considerable frontage on private land - the King River one of the five steepest rivers in Victoria.
He said allowing rivers to chart their own course "showed no respect for private boundaries" and priority needed to be given to river management "before there is massive asset and land loss".
"The original mission was to try and keep the river within the 1917 course and it was largely successful because of maintenance undertaken up until 2010, but there has been no maintenance since," he said.
"If the NECMA board is not going to take responsibility for it, then who is?
"Local shires won't be doing it because they require NECMA's planning approval, which it still wants authority over, but NECMA doesn't want to put any dollars on the ground for works."
Mr Diffey said at sites like the Fosangs Creek offtake, minimal maintenance would have ensured rail grid iron installed to prevent erosion, and an offtake pipe which has now been left exposed, functioned as intended, preventing the river from carving a new path into the creek.
It was Mr Diffey who sought support and funding for those preventative works to be undertaken some 35 years ago, and he says they ensured the river maintained its course for decades.
"The need for major work is now critical to prevent Fosangs Creek becoming the King River," he said.
"Serious damage to infrastructure and private assets will occur if no action is taken.
"The current NECMA board should be asking the Minister for Water and Victorian Government for the necessary funds to maintain the steep rivers in their catchment, because their position on it at the moment is not where a lot of landholders think it should be."
Local landholder Franco Corsini, whose property fronts the King River at the Fosangs Creek site, has said the railway iron piles installed on the bend had been effective barriers over many floods, until about five years ago.
In response to issues raised by a group of concerned King Valley landholders last year over a lack of maintenance works taking place in the King River, NECMA CEO Katie Warner said while NECMA has a regulatory role under the Water Act 1989 to authorise individuals and organisations to carry out flood mitigation activities on waterways, it did not have a responsibility to carry out flood mitigation activities themselves.
NECMA is currently working with the Corsini family to address issues at the Fosangs Creek site, with survey work and modelling taking place.
The authority says its King River Rehabilitation Plan, which was expected to be released in July this year, is still being developed and will guide future government investment in and along the river as it becomes available.
