Overflow: Flooding outside the Croydon Leisure and Aquatic Centre in 2009.
Overflow: Flooding outside the Croydon Leisure and Aquatic Centre in 2009.
A CROYDON area prone to flooding will receive a much-needed upgrade as part of a $2 million flood mitigation project.
Councillors were expected to vote in favour of the new design at their meeting last night.
Properties on Lusher Road, Birdwood Road and Civic Place — all next to the Croydon Leisure and Aquatic Centre (CLAC) — will now "almost certainly" be free from future flooding, according to Maroondah Council.
Lusher Road resident Lian Spafford said the upgrade, which she had not seen plans of at the time of publication, was well overdue.
"Every winter you'd have to check the weather and if there were three of four days of rain forecast you'd know you were in for it," she said.
Ms Spafford said the flooding had had a significant impact on her and her neighbours in the past.
"The property behind me has flooded half a dozen times. Last time it flooded we were knee-deep in water helping them out."
She said two landowners in her street no longer received insurance from floods after their insurer became fed up with the number of times water had damaged the house.
She said another nearby resident had her house raised after continual flooding.
As part of the new flood basin, three tennis courts outside CLAC will be relocated to a vacant site further up the road.
This area will be transformed into 70 additional parking spaces which, combined with the existing car spaces, will form a new flood basin.
Water will run into the car parking space but will be capped to a level "around knee height".
Maroondah director of operations and infrastructure Trevor Welsh said he was confident houses would not be affected under the new design unless there were rains of "biblical proportions".
The project is expected to cost $1.5 million to $2 million and, if a planning permit is received by June, is expected to be finished by October.