Traveston Dam: the folly continues
EIS draws record response
With the EIS submission period over, the proposed Traveston Dam has moved squarely into the national conservation arena. Despite being labelled as "far from pristine" by ex-Premier Peter Beattie or " a NIMBY issue" by current Premier Anna Bligh, environmentalists nationally have recognised there is much to be lost should Peter Garrett give the Mary Dam the green light.
Weighing in at over 20 kg, the EIS package for the dam may well have been the nations largest, but the number of submissions it has generated has also been of epic proportions. The Sunshine Coast Daily reported that 16,488 submissions had been received by noon on the closing day, and staff advised that they were continuing to pour in throughout the afternoon.
After nearly three months, the Deputy Premier advised parliament recently that 11,261 submissions had been assessed after duplicates were removed.
While many of the submissions came from the Mary Valley in the vicinity of the dam, (headed by the Save the Mary's 180 page response), by far the greatest number came from the area downstream. The recently-established, Maryborough-based Greater Mary Association generated some 10,000 individual submissions as well as its own 68-page critique of the EIS.
One has to wonder whether State Climate Change Minister and local member for that part of the river, Andrew McNamara will be able to shrug off the overwhelming vote of "no confidence" in his government's plan.
The Prime Minister's National Plan to tackle the water crisis (from the pm's website)
Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. As the impact of climate change intensifies, Australia faces increasingly acute long-term water shortages both in our cities and regional areas - with lower rainfall, rivers drying up and dam water levels falling. Tackling the water crisis is a major long-term priority for the Australian Government.
Tackling the water crisis and securing our future water supply requires all Australians to work together to use water more efficiently, cut water wastage, more effectively capture rain and stormwater, and adapt to the impact of climate change.
The Rudd Government will tackle the water crisis with a national plan to invest in water infrastructure, sustain our farming communities, revitalise our rivers and waterways, secure water supplies in our cities and towns and ensure that we become smarter and more efficient in our water usage.
The Government will invest in greater use of recycled water, desalination and stormwater through a $1 billion urban water infrastructure fund. The Government will also assist households to install water and energy efficient products, with rebates for rainwater tanks and solar hot water.
The Government will also be working cooperatively with State and Local Governments, farmers, industry and the community to secure Australia's long-term water supply.
Pools in the Mary River, like these are home to the "living fossil", the lungfish, and sandy beaches provide nesting banks for rare turtles. Image: Arkin Mackay
The Tell Kevin Campaign
The Prime Minister's statement sounds like that of a government that has learnt lessons from the Murray and is keen to avoid similar catastrophic and costly mistakes, while seeking to ensure reliable sources of water that are less rainfall-dependent and less impacted by climate change.
This could have been written by any of us opposing the folly of this dam. The fact is though, that it was written by the man who heads the team that'll have the final say on whether the Mary flows or flounders.
We need to be writing to the PM, to his key Ministers and to federal Labor backbenchers to congratulate them on this far-sighted and visionary statement and to contrast it with the actions of the Qld government that not only insists on building the dam but that has done such a cursory examination of all alternatives.
The State Government, and its offshoot QWI, have acted as if there is no impediment to the dam being built; it has thumbed its nose at the possibility that EPBC approval may not be forthcoming, and has embarked on an aggressive process of property acquisition, meetings with contractors etc.
Recent rains have removed some of the urgency of the water "crisis" and allow a breathing space to ensure the wisest water decisions are the ones put into play.
We need a lot of letters to do this. Lots! The bar has been set so high with the number of EIS submissions that many heads turned. Now that they've turned we need them to start to think outside the pro-Traveston briefing they would have received from the State Government.
Your original letters are always best. Politicians use the rule of thumb that for every letter (or email) received, at least a hundred people share the same viewpoint. That's why sixteen thousand submissions turned more than a few heads. Next come form letters which aren't credited with the same 1 to 100 factor but they're still worth doing.
Call on the Prime Minister and the Federal Government to apply its visionary water policy to override Queensland's ill-advised decision to pursue this dam. How harshly would the new government be judged if it espoused such a noble and enlightened vision for water and waterways yet failed to deliver at its very first test.
For more information, visit the Save the Mary website or call at their No Dam Infocentre at Kandanga.
Into the National Spotlight
The Australian Conservation Foundation has placed the Traveston Dam and its threat to turtles and lungfish in pride of place on its website.
Featured heavily are the incredible algal-affroed Mary River Turtle photographs taken last year near Kenilworth by Sunshine Coast Photographer Chris Van Wyck.
ACF has established a letter generator to lobby the federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett against approving the dam. There's more than a touch of irony in this as Peter Garrett is a past President of ACF and is well acquainted with the adverse impacts of dams.
As well as this, respected Wilderness Society campaigner Lyndon Schneiders in an on-line blog reflecting on politics and environment in Queensland, made reference to "the ill-considered Traveston Dam on the Mary River" and "environmentally disastrous schemes such as the Traveston Dam".
(Just recently TWS revealed government plans for a dam on Baffle Creek and while Water Minister Craig Wallace " could neither confirm nor deny" the plan, Premier Anna Bligh was very quick to rule it out.)
Earlier this year, Radio National replayed " A Whisper from the Past", Nick Franklin's investigation of the mysterious appeal of the lungfish, a descendant of the link with the first water creatures that were able to breathe air. The program has been aired on the BBC and previously also on Radio Eye. More recently, ABC TV's 7.30 Report was in the Mary Valley and Sandy Straits investigating the issue.
During the Senate Enquiry, it became all too obvious that the ripples of this proposal had spread far beyond the Mary Valley. If the government had been hoping that proceeding full steam ahead with land acquisitions and a program of relentless bombardment of "this dam is going ahead" propaganda, might have resulted in diminished opposition, it has plainly received a huge surprise.
The big question will be whether the government's blustering "act like it's already approved" style will be allowed to influence a decision that should have been made on purely environmental grounds under the EPBC Act. Federal Labor has an excellent and visionary Water Policy. It's hard to see how it could bend to include something like Traveston Dam.
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The state government has a bad track record with infrastructure. In Andrew Macnamas electorate of Hervey Bay, the Lenthalls Dam raising ( Burrum River) was completed in Dec 07 and the Lenthalls Dam gates have failed from Jan 08 and are still not repaired. The state govt has not held any of those responsible for this infrastructure failure to account.
Those responsible for the dam gate failure still have andrew mcnamaras support.
The gates at Lenthalls Dam were designed to lower to release flood water to ensure that mouth of the Burrum River remained open and that the seagrass beds and mangroves forming part of the marine park at the river mouth recieved flushing. Obvously now that the Lenthalls Dam gates wont lower as designed this environmental flow is impeded.
Not only is the Traveston Dam a disaster but people in the Traveston Community will have to live with affects for years later. I am concerned that the state govt does not have the skills to administer the infrastructure they are building.
Lenthalls Dam Gates (to raise storage on the Burrum River) just north of Traveston was completed in Dec 07 and failed from 01/08.
The infrastructure cost millions of dollars and still doesn not work. Our Family ( upstream) were almost washed away by the failure of the gates.
See the ABCarticle:
Resident fears dam gates risk flooding
Updated Wed May 21, 2008 8:25am AEST
• Map: Hervey Bay 4655
A land-holder upstream of a major dam south-west of Hervey Bay says multi-million dollar barriers on the storage are broken, putting her family at risk of flooding.
Queensland Deputy Premier Paul Lucas will officially open the $16 million project at Lenthalls Dam, which is designed to more than double the storage’s capacity.
In what is claimed to be an Australian first, the two metre high crest gates sink when the dam reaches capacity to prevent flooding upstream and provide for environmental flows.
But Esther Allan says in February the gates jammed, causing water to back up onto her property.
“This is an extremely expensive piece of infrastructure. Ratepayers paid for this and their expectation would be that it would be operable,” she said.
“If it wasn’t, we need to know why - not only because our family’s safety was put at risk, but because ratepayers expect to get a result from the infrastructure they pay for.”
The local government corporation that runs Lenthalls Dam says the gates do not work, but it was monitoring the rising water.
Wide Bay Water general manager David Wiskar says adjustments were needed during the dam’s commissioning and are continuing.
“The gates were all needing some fine-tuning. At the moment we were able to complete that tuning on three of the gates,” he said.
“There’s two that remain to be done, but we’re waiting until the level in the dam falls to an adequate level to [do] those final two.”