{"id":2536,"date":"2026-07-20T11:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T11:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/petermbach.com\/?page_id=2536"},"modified":"2026-09-07T21:13:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:13:46","slug":"070-tim-d-fletcher","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/petermbach.com\/index.php\/podcast\/070-tim-d-fletcher\/","title":{"rendered":"TGC Podcast Episode 070 – Tim D. Fletcher"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Grand Challengers Podcast Episode #70<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The permeable engineer, saving a stream with its catchment and tanks for platypus<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Guest: Tim D. Fletcher<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

September 8th, 2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Tim D. Fletcher did not plan to work on cities. He studied forest science, worked as a commercial tree faller and then a firefighting tree faller, did a PhD in rural hydrology, and took a stormwater job at Melbourne Water that felt on the first morning like a serious mistake. What changed his mind was a single idea: that you could use nature to protect nature, and do it in the least likely place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three decades later he is Professor of Urban Ecohydrology at the University of Melbourne, running a research group whose work reaches from laboratory columns to whole catchments. This conversation follows that arc through three chapters. At Monash he helped build MUSIC, the model that replaced back-of-the-envelope stormwater design across Australia, and along the way stumbled on the moment two colleagues realised at a shared office printer that they had independently drawn the same decay curve. At Melbourne he joined Chris Walsh on Little Stringybark Creek, retrofitting nearly three hundred stormwater control measures into an existing catchment and measuring what happened, with a reverse auction that asked residents to name the price they would accept for hosting one. And now, under an Australian Research Council Industry Laureate Fellowship, he is networking smart rainwater tanks across a catchment east of Melbourne so a stream can hold its flow for a species that cannot survive without it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The technical work is only half of it. Tim is unusually direct about what does not work, including his own most-cited paper, which he calls a blah-blah paper, and a council stormwater strategy he wrote that sat on a shelf until he had to teach its own authors their policy to get a permit for his firewood shed. Underneath everything sits a straightforward moral claim about research funding, and a quieter one about how he would like to be remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Episode Teaser<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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