Paterson River Bank Restoration, Lower Hunter

Around 160 kilometres of mostly grassed earthen levee keep floodwater off towns and farmland in the Lower Hunter Valley, much of it built on the natural river banks. The April 2015 and January 2016 floods scoured those banks, and where a bank goes the levee on it follows. In 2017 we restored two of the worst reaches, about 430 metres of the Paterson's left bank.

The river was flowing for the whole job. Cutting a bank down to foundation level leaves it at its most exposed while the work is open, so each reach was sequenced to be open for as short a time as possible and to be in a defensible state if rain came upstream. We reshaped the bank, armoured it with rockfill revetment and toe protection, extended a 900 mm outlet to the levee toe and revegetated it.