'Prosecute' call on failed Paradise Dam
stevem
in Environmental Impact Statement, Paradise Dam, Peter Garrett
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I MAR 2008
Minister repeats false claims of success on Burnett
Story: Arthur Gorrie
QUEENSLAND Water Infrastructure officials should be prosecuted, not protected, over their failures to meet environmental requirements attached to Commonwealth approval for the Paradise Dam, Save the Mary River Group secretary David Kreutz said yesterday.
Mr Kreutz said it was ridiculous a State Government that wanted to dam the Mary River should be in charge of auditing its past performance and should then appoint its dam construction company to conduct the audit.
“When you get audited by the Taxation Department, they don’t just ask you if everything’s OK and then let you check your own figures.
“That’s not what an audit is,” he said.
“The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is still a law and the Paradise Dam’s so-called ‘partial compliance’ is not compliance, it is non-compliance in all but the best of circumstances.
“When you get a speeding ticket, do they ask you if you were speeding and then accept it if you say no?
“When you break the law, you get prosecuted.
“The same should go for government or neo-government officials who break laws like the EPBC Act,” he said.
Mr Kreutz said the Federal Government did not yet appear to have released the full environmental audit report on the Paradise Dam, a crucial part of any approval or rejection of the Traveston Crossing dam by Environment Minister Peter Garrett.
Even the one-page summary, which had been released, made it clear the Paradise Dam’s fishway was not working. Its success was a critical condition of the original Commonwealth approval for the Burnett River dam.
Water Minister Craig Wallace this week trumpeted the claimed environmental success of the dam, claiming it was “proving its critics wrong”.
Even with its fishway still inoperable, the Minister claimed the dam had been “unfairly attacked” in the worst drought on record and had “a good environmental record”.
“Paradise Dam is now making the critics drink their words,” he said.
“It is now well placed to fuel strong growth in the region by providing much needed water to farms and industry.”
He repeated his incorrect claim last week that the dam had been cleared by his department’s audit of its environmental performance.
“The dam is now at 45.6 per cent capacity,” he said, up from the 4 per cent he claimed last week, but still substantially less than the 57 per cent he said was the approximate minimum at which the fish-way would work.
And despite an audit summary that described the dam as “only partially compliant” and indicated the only organisation claiming this was good enough was the dam’s management body, Burnett Water Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of the State Government’s bulk water resource body, Sunwater, itself a division of Mr Wallace’s department.
He said he had been “advised by Sunwater that a recent Commonwealth Government audit of Paradise Dam had confirmed the dam is complying with the EPBC Act”. As reported in The Gympie Times last week, the audit report actually records the dam’s failure to achieve full compliance on the lungfish, specifically listed as vulnerable under the Act, and quotes the operating authority saying the fishway was an imperfect compromise.
stevem
Our View - 1 MAR 2008
Nev McHaig
It appears the State Government has two sets of standards it comes to dealing with different areas of Queensland.
Almost two years Since Premier Peter Beattie flew into Gympie, announced he is going to dam the Mary River and flew out. After the impact sunk in the questions began to fly as to just how much prior planning had gone into this dam proposal and why there had been no consultation.
It soon became apparent Mr Beattie and his then deputy, now Premier Anna Bligh, had along with colleagues made a decision, based on a few pages of a desk top study as a knee–jerk reaction to a looming water crisis in Brisbane.
It is a crisis that still exists, but now seems of little consequence to some as storages approach 40 per cent and the city’s population cries out for relaxation of rationing measures.
This week it was divulged the Government was planning to dam Baffle Creek to supply Gladstone with water.
However, the Government has been quick to refute the claims, saying such a decision would take years to reach because of all the studies and consultation that would be needed. This smacks very much of double standards.
Two studies are underway, one on the environmental health of the rivers in the water basin and what water can be taken for other purposes, the second is a 50 year water supply study of potential sources of water to meet these needs.
In the case of the Mary neither of these studies was done prior to the Government’s announcement.
The Government has now discovered regional water supply planning also involves looking at all options for future water supplies for a region including desalination, ground-water, dams, water recycling as well as demand management.
Why did these criteria not apply in the case of the Mary Valley?
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Reader Comments (1)
You can download it online from:
http://www.sunwater.com.au/about_annualreport.htm
Here are two excerpts, from the "Highlights" and "Community and Environment" sections, respectively:
http://www.sunwater.com.au/pdf/about/6-7_p10-11_highlights.pdf
Quote:
The Australian Government Department of Environment and Water Resources conducted an audit on the conditional approval of Paradise Dam with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). The audit found Burnett Water Pty Ltd to be compliant in most areas, with some minor non-compliances demonstrated as in the process of being addressed.
http://www.sunwater.com.au/pdf/about/6-7_p26-33_community_environment.pdf
Quote:
On 25-28 June 2007 the Australian Government Department of Environment and Water Resources conducted a compliance audit on the implementation of approval conditions associated with the operation of Paradise Dam. SunWater organised site inspections at the dam and environmental monitoring sites, and provided full access to records. The audit findings were that SunWater was substantially complying with the EPBC Act approval conditions.
Work undertaken by SunWater included development and progressive implementation of a management plan to preserve the presence of the Black Breasted Button Quail in the dam habitat area. SunWater is also supporting the Burnett Mary Regional Group initiatives to monitor and maintain habitat in the Burnett River estuary to protect listed migratory bird species.
The fish transfer devices on Paradise Dam were not operating at the time of the audit due to low water levels in the dam. When sufficient water is available for the operation of these devices, monitoring will be carried out to assess their sustainability for enabling local fish populations, including lungfish, to move upstream and downstream of the dam wall. SunWater demonstrated its ongoing aquatic ecosystem monitoring in the vicinity of the dam. This 10-year monitoring program includes measuring the condition of lungfish and their habitat.
In operating Paradise Dam, SunWater substantiated that it was complying with all environmental flow requirements as specified in the Burnett Basin ROP.
Some minor areas of concern were noted in the interim audit report, but SunWater is confident that it can demonstrate that processes are in place to address these issues.
SunWater is committed to maintaining and where possible enhancing the environmental value in all of the areas in which it operates, and will continue to operate Paradise Dam in accordance with EPBC Act approval conditions."
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The document doesn't have any release date or revision number on the title page or in the footers, but the document properties for the PDF files say "Created: 1/11/2007, Last Modified 15/11/07". This fits reasonably with what I was told when I phoned the SunWater PR department responsible for the report – that it was first released in October 2007, with a few typos corrected shortly thereafter, and no further changes.
What I don’t get, is what was all the Peter Garrett BS about with-holding the report from the public while “negotiating” with SunWater, when SunWater was free to release its own biased summary of the report? How much influence did this then have on the “negotiated” outcome? I guess we’ll never know if we’re not allowed to see a copy of the original pre-October draft report.
And regarding the SunWater statement:
Quote:
The fish transfer devices on Paradise Dam were not operating at the time of the audit due to low water levels in the dam. When sufficient water is available for the operation of these devices, monitoring will be carried out to assess their sustainability for enabling local fish populations, including lungfish, to move upstream and downstream of the dam wall.
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…The EPBC approval of Paradise Dam was subject to a list of 9 conditions. You can read them in the files http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/epbc/epbc_ap.pl?name=show_document;document_id=4863;proposal_id=422 and http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/epbc/epbc_ap.pl?name=show_document;document_id=11220;proposal_id=422
Condition number 3 was:
Quote:
Burnett Water Pty Ltd must install a fish transfer device on the Burnett River Dam suitable for the lungfish. The fishway will commence when the dam becomes operational.
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There’s nothing in there about “when sufficient water is available”.