Greg Roberts
13 OCT 2008 page 5
Alternatives to Queensland’s controversial Traveston Dam are being considered by the Bligh Government in the event the project is scuttled by the commonwealth or prompts the Greens to direct preferences away from Labor at the next election.
Government sources have told the Australian a desalination plant would be built on Bribie Island on the Sunshine Coast if the $2 billion Traveston Dam proposal collapsed or was abandoned. A desalination plant is already under construction on the Gold Coast as part of the Bligh Government’s $9 billion strategy to drought-proof south-east Queensland. The Traveston Dam proposal is a key plank of the strategy.
New Greens MP Ronan Lee who defected from the Labor Government last week, said yesterday the dam would be central to his party’s preference strategy at next year’s election.
The Traveston dam is opposed by the Liberal National Party, which in another move to woo the Greens, has pledged not to overturn Labor’s ban on tree clearing.
” We would consider a commitment by the Government to build the dam a very big negative in terms of those preferences” Mr Lee said. “For the Greens, the issue is fundamentally important. The commitment by the LNP to stop the dam is a very big tick for them.”
The latest Newspoll showed the Bligh Government would have been defeated without the aid of Green’s preferences if a state election had been held last month.
Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett is expected to receive the state’s environmental impact statement for the Traveston proposal soon.
Deputy Premier Paul Lucas said yesterday that independent analysis showed the Traveston Dam was better for the environment and water users than a desalination plant. “We are confident we can meet federal government requirements for best practice when it comes to the environment,” he said.
A coalition of environmental and community groups has lodged a Federal Court action that could lead to the blocking of the Traveston proposal.
The action seeks an order declaring that a fishway built to move lungfish around the wall of the Paradise Dam on the Burnett River is not working , and the dam is therefore operating in breach of the environmental laws.
A similar fishway is planned for the Traveston Dam on the Mary River. The lungfish is found only on the Burnett and Mary rivers.
In a paper published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fish, Griffith University ecologist Angela Arthington said the dam would have severe consequences for the lungfish.
While lungfish depended on shallow waters that had more complex habitat structures than deeper impoundments, Professor Arthington said, the dam would result in the animal’s resting, feeding and spawning areas being inundated by 5m of water