John Hodgkineon Coorparoo.

I BELIEVE information I have obtained may affect the approach to the dam being thrust upon the Mary Val­ley community.

Bureau of Meteorology information proves that there is not, and has never been, a drought in the Wi­venhoe / Somerset / North Pine Dam system.

The bureau’s correspondence to me reveals that in the last three years the dams received 80 per cent of the average rainfall measured against the 30 year av­erage 1961 to 1990 and this 80 per cent was the lowest on record.

This statistical aberration, “the lowest on record” has been used to sponsor the “worst drought on re­cord” saturating the understanding of the people of Brisbane and surrounds.

It is a two-edged sword as it also means that the rainfall has never been less than 80 per cent of that average in 100 years.

To support the correspondence, and with the assis­tance of the bureau’s web-site and their officers, I col­lected the rainfall data for all recording stations in the dam system. The data dates back to the 1880s. The 80 per cent became 82 per cent.

A graph I have produced from the data lists eight periods of five years to compare the last five years (2001 to 2005) being the period described by SEQWa­tar in its 2005 annual report as the time of the “drought and well-below-average rainfall”.

There is no drought. We simply overran the ability of the catcbments to supply our unrestricted needs and replenish the dams.

Of critical importance to your communities is that the dam system needs to expand the catchment and not the storage of water. The dam capacities are more than adequate to handle our current needs and needs well into the future.

Flood years of the severity of 1974 and 1893 will on­ly increase our dam levels by 16 per cent and 29 per cent.

What our dams need from the Mary River is an ex­panded catchment. Once collected it is pumped into the Wivenhoe and not ponded in the Mary Valley. This has a big bearing on the size and capacity of the proposed dam. It is this point that your leaders and activists should consider in order to minimise the im­pact on your communities.

They should also consider collecting the “hard da­ta” from Bureau of Metrology rainfall statistics and leave the area of argument based on people’s impres­sions. It will only take a few days of one’s time.