Further information on the proposed Traveston dam controversy

Why did Brisbane have the worst floods since 1974? The building of the Wivenhoe dam was meant to stop those floods from ever happening again… yet it happened again.

Three years ago, the former Premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie claimed that with climate change the soaking rains would never happen again, and therefore Queensland needed to find ways of supplying water. Amongst the ideas given was that people should get used to using recycled water (yuk!!).  Peter Beattie also argued in favour of building the Traveston dam, even though the National Party, and the locals in the Mary Valley were against it. The attitude of the locals was insufficient but let’s look at the history of this controversial project.

I found some useful comments on one of Andrew Bolt’s blogs where the subject was raised. Andrew drew on the opinions of the disgraced Tim Flannery, who had made many of the predictions that Beattie believed. You can read the blog post here:

I found some really good information in the comments, written by Dave Ross, Rose and brc ( I hope they do not mind that I am using their comments.

Dave Ross replied to yobbo of Brisbane
Wed 13 Oct 10 (11:09am)

Yobbo OB,
The State Labor government is building the Wyaralong dam as we speak.
The Traveston Crossing Dam was effectively stopped by the Qld. State Coordinator General who finally under intense government pressure, approved the dam but under stringent conditions that virtually made it impossible to build.
The ALP Feds involvement under the EPBC act was inevitable and an easy decision for them.
Not widely known is that the Traveston Crossing Dam site was previously investigated and rejected in 1977 and 1994 by the National and ALP State governments respectively, on economic, engineering, social and environmental grounds.
In 2005 the technical advisory panel to the Water Resource Plan for the Mary Basin reported to the Beattie government that any project involving a dam on the Mary would be subject to scrutiny by the Feds under the EPBC act and would certainly be rejected.
Beattie ignored this advice and declared game on for the TCD in 2006. The scientists have been proven correct.
The EPBC act was introduced under the conservative Howard government in 1999 and had the approval of all political parties, thus in democratic terms, the majority of Australian citizens.
Beattie cost us a fortune by pursuing the TCD nonsense for pure political gain.
He wanted to announce something big before the early 2006 election he wasn’t going to have and at the same time drive a wedge between the Liberal and National parties who were close to merging as the LNP.
The Libs being notionally pro dam and the Nats anti.
That didn’t work and the grandiose Labor dam plan failed us all dismally.

Rose replied to yobbo of Brisbane
Wed 13 Oct 10 (11:26am)

Peter Garrett also checked out the dam on economic grounds. The Centre for International Economics, Canberra, found that the Bligh Govt could not show that Traveston Dam was the best option to meet SEQld`s water needs. Peter Garrett posted this report online after Bligh complained of his decision.

brc replied to yobbo of Brisbane
Wed 13 Oct 10 (11:34am)

The Traveston crossing dam was another white-elephant in the making.  It would have destroyed a lot of productive farmland, and the scientific studies done were not even completed when work started.  The average depth was going to be a few metres, and evaporation was going to be a real issue.  As it was, it devastated a community. It would have cost a few billion and produced expensive water.  There are plenty of other workable and useful sites a lot closer to Brisbane than Traveston crossing.  That’s why it was a bad idea and why it was rightfully killed.  It’s a pity Garrett had to be the one that did it.

The main reason Traveston Crossing was chosen was it was the closest location Beattie could find that was never going to vote for him anyway.

Dave Ross replied to yobbo of Brisbane
Wed 13 Oct 10 (04:13pm)

brc,
Certainly the view that there were only a few National party voters in the area so there would be no political fallout was aired at a caucus meeting and of course there hasn’t been a state Labor member here for over 50 years.
However Pumpkin Pete made quite a large political misjudgement and the ALP has lost every neighbouring seat in the area starting with Noosa.
The ALP member at the time, Cate Molloy lost her endorsement for the seat after voting with the coalition against the dam proposal.
Many people in the seat of Gympie have relatives on the Sunshine Coast and the Wide Bay area.
Blood is thicker than water it seems.
Many members of Kevin Rudd’s mother’s family also live here including his Uncle Kevin who he was named after.

I must admit that I had not heard of the Wyaralong dam, so I gather that this dam is a substitute for the Traveston dam, and obviously it is being built in a better location. What these people are pointing out is that Peter Beattie was being cynical in his choice of location for the needed dam. On top of that, the dam was just completed in time to be filled up from the rains.   It would seem that this time around Peter Garrett made the right choice, not based upon the endangered species in the river, but for economic grounds. 

To build or not to build a dam –that is the question

The proposed Traveston dam on the Mary River was always considered controversial. When the Rudd Government environment minister, Peter Garrett blocked the building of the dam, the people in the region were quite happy. The Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh did not attempt to protest the blocking of the dam but instead she decided to take the route of building a desalinisation plant.  The question to be asked right now, though, is whether or not the blocking of the dam, in light of the floods experienced last year and again this year, made matters worse for the flooding of Brisbane.

First of all,  here is a little bit of perspective regarding the region under discussion and how it relates to Brisbane:

 

 

 

As you can see from the map, Maryborough is to the north of Brisbane, and below Rockhampton, Hervey Bay and Bundaberg. Toowoomba is to the west of Brisbane.

During December the Fitzroy river, which flows through Rockhampton was in flood, and it was the same in early January.  From this map we should be able to trace the flow of the waters from the Fitzroy River, and into the Wivenhoe dam.  The rains in this region had been heavy since at least September 2010, which in effect explains why the Wivenhoe dam had reached capacity.

Now let us look at the reasons that Garrett rejected the building of a dam on the Mary River. Keep in mind that the residents were against the building of the dam (which is natural since they would have been displaced). However, the reason for the decision was based upon the fact that three endangered species that rely upon the Mary River would have been displaced. These species are: the Australian lung fish, the Mary River turtle, and the Mary River cod. The building of the dam would have destroyed the natural habitat of these species.  However, Garrett did not base his decision to ban the dam on the impact of these species, but he based it upon a report from the Centre for International Economics which came to the conclusion that the decision by the Queensland Government to go ahead and build the dam was based upon flawed data.

If the project had been given the go ahead, then the dam would have been able to supply 70,000 megalitres of water to the Brisbane population.  It might or might not helped in the mitigation of the flood damage that was experienced in the towns south of Maryborough.

Since this was a recent project, there is doubt that had the dam being given approval to go ahead that it would have been finished in time, or at least prior to the rains brought by the La Nina.  The point is that even if the building of this dam was blocked, the Queensland government then did nothing to seek out alternative spots to build a dam, and instead chose to go ahead and build 4 desalination plants that have now been mothballed.

On top of that, I suspect that decisions were being made based upon the belief that “climate change” meant that Queensland would never see again the floods of the past. The Wivenhoe dam was built after the floods of 1974, and it was supposed to stop a similar kind of devastating flood from happening again.  There are plenty of questions to be asked about how the operators of the Wivenhoe dam were releasing water in the week prior to the devastating floods.  It is not so much the banning of the Traveston dam on the Mary River that helped to cause the situation, but the operation of the Wivenhoe that needs to be examined in some detail. Also, what needs to be questioned is why did the Queensland government fail to seek other alternative sites for a dam, sites that would have been more viable than the proposed Traveston, and sites that did not involve damaging the habitat of endangered species.