[Rohan Escreet, Melbourne Water Senior Project Manager]
So we had some flash flooding in 2011 which was the start of this project and a number of houses were seriously flooded during that event and a lot of people's safety put at risk.
[Cr Tony Athanasopoulos, Glen Eira City Council]
I was driving actually along Railway Parade one afternoon and there was those big floods that you talk about and there was a car stuck in the middle. It just serves a point of how bad it did get. That was for a car, there was also houses that had threats due to flooding.
[Kerin McMahon, Melbourne Water Community Engagement Manager]
So we have a flood mapping team at Melbourne Water which had a look at what the best way would be to tackle this problem and how we could reduce flooding for the residents in Murrumbeena and Malvern. It was decided that since this area used to be a creek, a natural flowing creek bed, that we would cut into the embankment that was here, lower the embankment so the water could flow overland flow into a pit to reduce flooding in the area.
[Rohan Escreet, Melbourne Water Senior Project Manager]
We installed about nearly 2 kilometres of 1.8 metre diameter drain, including crossing major crossings of 2 railway lines and Dandenong Road. There's a lot of organisations and authorities involved in the area and in the project or projects and to be able to get those organisations to work together to create a quality outcome was an excellent result.
[Cr Steve Stefanopoulos, City of Stonnington Mayor]
For us at the City of Stonnington we're delighted that we could partner with Melbourne Water and the city of Glen Eira here to fix up this drain that was through this area that leads into Gardiners Creek.
[Cr Tony Athanasopoulos, Glen Eira City Council]
There's a path that comes right through, it also connects with the linear park and the Djerring Trail as well, so all of a sudden we've connected two parts of the community that were really never connected before.
[Cr Sally Davis, City of Stonnington]
Now that the project's completed, we now have a beautiful park restored with double the amount of trees and already the residents can see that in the future they'll benefit.
[Kerin McMahon, Melbourne Water Community Engagement Manager]
It's been a huge amount of work but it's also been really satisfying for so many of us at Melbourne Water. We've worked so well with Stonnington Council and Glen Eira Council and the residents throughout this project and local traders as well and we're just delighted that it's really come to success.
[Melbourne Water logo]