Why houses will never be built on the Barham River floodplain

Because the first builder will find himself uninsurable because of either settlement, flood risk or both .
As we know , that hasn't stopped some of our councillors from thinking the whole idea is a great idea.What a waste of time.
Our councillors are too willing to trust reports and guarantees from afar . Guarantees that aren't worth all the reams of paper they are now printed on .
It's not what’s in those reports that we need to worry about -- its what‘s not in them. . All those megabucks our Council spent listening and responding to report after report.
Why did noone mention engineered fill failure ? A simple evaluation of the catchment landscapes and soils capability was not done - The local fill will not consolidate. That capability information used to be a statutory requirement in the scheme, but the word and job has been removed in the last few years and DSE don't bother providing such advice anymore.
The very last review by VCAT of the project failed to pick up this important matter , assumming the many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of local fill would be suitable - when they clearly would not be! Up until 2005, such matters would have been identified in a one page report to Council, as would the vanity of trying to protect houses from damage at the end of a high energy boulder river with frequent landslip and debris loads. How much more time and money will we see wasted on reports from un-authoritative Authorities? Time Mr Mulder helped us weed out people who say a lot, but say nothing.