Insights · 23 April 2026 · Planted
A new $56M package follows the May 2025 floods, with $8.8M set aside for environmental restoration - repairing riparian zones and coastal areas. In practice, that's revegetation and erosion-control work.
A new package of more than $56 million has been committed to ongoing flood recovery on the Mid North Coast, following the severe weather of May 2025. Within it, $8.8 million is set aside for environmental restoration - explicitly including repairing riparian zones and coastal areas. Strip back the funding language and that’s a description of on-ground revegetation and erosion-control work.
What “repairing the banks” actually involves
Floods don’t just deposit debris - they scour banks back, strip vegetation and leave bare, unstable soil that keeps eroding with every subsequent flow. Putting that right is a sequence, not a single pass:
- Stabilise the exposed soil. Jute and coir on scoured banks and batters to hold the surface and slow the water while anything can re-establish.
- Replant to the zone. Native tubestock matched to the toe, bank and terrace - the plants that hold a bank long-term, not just green it for a year.
- Establish it. Flood-recovery planting is exposed and high-stakes; it needs a maintenance window to actually take, or the next event undoes the spend.
Why it matters now
Recovery funding tends to arrive in waves and move quickly once it lands. The work it pays for - riparian repair, bank stabilisation, coastal planting - is exactly the kind of job that has to be sequenced and installed properly to last, because it’s going straight back into the conditions that damaged it in the first place.
It’s the work we do across NSW: erosion control and revegetation, built for the site. Managing a flood-recovery or riparian project? Tell us about it.
