Are banks and waterways now obsolete in Australia's cropping areas?

Anyone who has witnessed rill and sheet erosion on  a cultivated paddock knows the damage can be severe.  Topsoils have been lost in  a large variety of soil specific slope situations in just one rainfall event  A lot of effort was put into designing and using banks and waterways in the early days of Soil Conservation services in Australia- even on very low slopes.( original post here was on the Charlton area )
Minimum tillage and improved management of weeds and soil structure has greatly limited the need for such works in many areas,   but should certain slopes still have some specific design structures ?( not those red soils again?)

Banks and waterways don't automatically stop sheet and rill erosion and  many of the early banks and waterways in the Charlton area  probably created higher erosion risks because they prevented a  full acceptance of the poor land capability.  We have learnt to resist some of these works to focus more on capability assessment , rejecting risky land use practices  and maintaining soil structure.
That great move aside -Are there still places where banks and waterways can be considered?

• Contour buffer strips?  
• Are they still being built anywhere in Australia ?
• Banks protecting low slopes below steep high water shedding  hills?
• Where soil types and are easily eroded ? (eg where loam topsoils are still in place)
  
• Would high cereal prices push some farmers to use marginal lands again? 
• Have we properly factored in the adverse effects of certain types of terrain  on the actual rainfall events and therefore estimated return periods  in some hill country ?( see previous posts)

YOUR stories of work with farmers

I'm collecting a series of short stories of OUR experiences in soil and water conservation  for publication ( names will be changed  to protect the innocent,  but authorship recognised ) For more info on this high risk,  high paying venture  contact riskwithinreason@gmail.com
David Elvery ( Bendigo ) has identified a great story set posting ( eg on very early Ag in the Millewa)   at  this most interesting biographical site  http://www.vicdofaghistory.org/contributions.html

Nice work when you can get it

The huge floods in Geelong in 1995 were caused by major flows in only a small area of the Barwons' huge catchment. These  floods in 1995 weren't expected ; nor were they well understood by agencies even years after the event.( see notes on Gippsland floods 2007 here )   We locals were predicting the high risk from strong easterlies since the early 1980's .On shore Easterlies are rare down here but are still clearly influential in producing higher than ARR&R curve daily rainfall return estimates.More here   


Is it possible that even today risk management estimates ( say regarding the floods on the east coast of Australia ta the moment ) are not realistic and accurate. Even politically and media skewed?  

Things have changed - but does the risk evaluation system work any better ? 
It used to be our job to dissipate unreasonable fear and direct action on sites . While this can still happen , those jobs mostly no longer exist and the advisory job is much more political with the people who speak  less local and less near the risk. We were taught in the city but we learned most of what we know on the ground
Our powerful media substitutes now talk "the greatest flood ever . the greatest fire ever , the hottest , the wildest, the fastest" .,but they know little  because they know not what the  normal range of resilience in nature looks like; the big picture is not in focus .

We could prevent real damage; had great on site jobs and great challenges to not only identify a real risk,  but try and stop someone from using land in a poor or destructive way. We were close to people so we weren't too careless with our criticisms ( " Don't drive through moving water " we hear re floods this week "
Ours  was work that provided hope for rural producers that resilient and regenerative use of abused ecosystems was possible. Knowing soils and sites we could tell when and where true degeneration and true restoration was possible .  It was work that resisted the careless panic by greens and city centrics that the country was falling apart.  It was work that defined resilience,  the basis for safety , resisted panic and cynicsm simply because any warnings were built on well thought through local connections.
Like good stewards of information and reform  we shared our concerns for unsustaianbility with the owner first .
Our powerful media substitutes now talk "resilience" danger and basis for safety but it's not personal; often too broad ,careless and therefore unable to hit the  motivation target ( Its "illegal " they say to try to get "action ") Such practice does not take  thinking people and real owners with them . Civil disobedience and cynicism grows just as the idea of emergency services grows ( rather than preventative services)

Towards a better service
All preventative services seem to need public talk of disasters to feed them.( we may not be able to do anything about that)  It' s when organisational leaders think the only ones they have to really listen to are politicians that a profession dies .
I pay tribute to the many managers in SCA who knew the difference and stood up for our profession against the evergreen onslaughts of the ignorant and fear prone in politics.