Dubbo Regional Council pays the consequence of ignoring Soil Conservation Service report

They did nothing about it.

The low-level Duke of Wellington Bridge was the first affected by the negligence.

After heavy rain fall the bridge eroded away almost completely, but had DRC taken action four years ago this disaster could have been prevented.

A report delivered to council in 2018 from the Soil Conservation Service, shows 16 high priority and 16 moderate priority areas that were in need of damage control.

The report states that areas along the Macquarie River in Dubbo show "severe bank erosion of high bank presenting a public safety issue".

As for the Bell River, the report mentioned ongoing erosion along these sections was resulting in the loss of private land and some areas present public safety risks.

This wasn't enough for council to step in and create change.

Dubbo Regional Council mayor Mathew Dickerson said the time to take some action was when Dubbo was going through a drought.

"The report was written in November 2018, so that was the time to do work on the river," he said.

Another site that council was warned could have irreparable erosion was the Tamworth Street Pedestrian Bridge.

The bridge has been under water more times than you can count on one hand in the past 12 months and is deteriorating quickly.

"We have an issue with the pedestrian bridge at Tamworth Street with erosion occurring after that particular area, so that will be an area we need to look at," Cr Dickerson said.

"But even if we were rushing to fix these issues, now is not the time to do it. While we have high water flows that's not the time to try and fix these problems."

Sandy Beach was another area of concern.

"It's very difficult to work with high water flows so we won't attempt to do repairs with all the water flows we've had," he said.

The current group of councillors were only made aware of the report in August this year.

"There were already high water flows when we were elected, so nothing could have been done at that stage had we even known about it," he said.

The mayor said this current council had done a "huge amount" of work to get DRC back on track.

No fluoride in Dubbo's water system, a $5 million pipeline to nowhere and now erosion that could have been prevented, were all mentioned by Cr Dickerson as problems the current council has worked to repair.

"Surely we've got to be getting to the bottom of the pile soon," he said.

"This is just another one of those issues."

Now that councillors are aware of the report, the mayor said they will be working through some of the high priority areas.

Engineers will be brought in to look at the future of Duke of Wellington Bridge before the other sites.

"In the report, this [Duke of Wellington Bridge] was the number one area because it's the area that has the most impact on people in terms of traffic, it is a huge area of concern," he said.

With the report stating the Bell River has a high percentage of bank sections exhibiting severe erosion, with the bulk of the reaches located downstream of the town centre, council just has to wait and see what happens next.

Unable to act until the high river flows go down, council will have to make a significant investment to address the ongoing river adjustment.

The council has applied for $300,000 under the state governments resilience fund, but Cr Dickerson said they were also working in house to find the money for different projects.

"We have put in funding applications to address some of these issues but there are times when council has to work out ways to fund various aspects," he said.

"We certainly didn't have any money in our budget to add a fluoride system to our water treatment plant because we thought that was happening already, so that will be money we have to find meaning we have to put back some expenditure on some other area.

"Now we have to do the same with the flood damage."

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