Some 18 months ago I wrote about a company called Sunwater, who owns the Paradise Dam, among many others, even including the Scrivener Dam in Canberra. Sunwater’s annual report declared that they made $97.9 million profit from water sales from the good old Paradise Dam, and this whilst the naive citizens of Brisbane maintain strict water restrictions. The sold water was purchased by power houses, beer corporations, cotton farm­ers, irrigationists and so on. When I reported Sunwater’s profits it hardly raised a comment. Let us hope that now people are starting to get a grasp on the bigger picture, and may strive to put an end to all this greed and madness.

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A number of events are taking place in Queensland that are significant for the future of environmental and water management. Foremost is recent comment by the current Minister of Environment, Dean Wells, stating: “If there’s an election undertaking, then that overrides any studies that might be done.” This presumably means no economic or environmental studies were taken into consideration in the approval process for the Burnett River Dam, including the latest report entitled Burnett Region Least Cost Planning Study commissioned by the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency from The Institute of Sustainable Futures. The second event is the imminent move by the Commonwealth government to accredit the states to assume certain responsibilities under the EPBC Act 1999 through bi-lateral agreements.

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Updated on Monday, January 15, 2007 at 08:17AM by stevem

“In particular the Government will: • Establish a new fishway at Claude Wharton Weir in 2007 • Establish or upgrade fish electronic monitoring devices at Ned Churchward Weir (1 December 2006) and at Kirar Weir (early 2007) • Undertake further investigations into lungfish spawning in particular whether lungfish are successfully spawning in impoundments at Paradise Dam, Ned Churchward Weir, Claude Wharton Weir and at Enoggera Dam and North Pine Dam in Brisbane • Undertake a 10-year lungfish monitoring program at a cost of $1million and • Complete preparation of a Lungfish Recovery Plan (or Management Plan) by January 2007 for which $1 million has been reserved under the Burnett Program of Actions to implement this Plan and a range of other measures.

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Property owners near the site of the proposed Paradise Dam, near Bundaberg, say heavy-handed tactics are being used to force them to sell their land.

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Queensland has some 30 major dams (ie. dams with a storage capacity of over 50 000 megalitres), most of them owned by the State owned SunWater Corporation. The replacement value of these assets is estimated to be some $2.5 billion. In addition, local governments own water supply, water treatment and wastewater infrastructure with an estimated replacement value of $18 billion. Water Boards, mining companies and individual landholders own other water infrastructure. Total water use within the State is approaching 3.5 million megalitres per annum. By comparison, the mean annual discharge of all Queensland streams is some 159 million megalitres. A large proportion of the mean annual discharge is in the sparsely populated and largely undeveloped Cape York Peninsula and North West region. Of the water consumed annually, about 65% is used for agricultural irrigation, 17% for urban purposes, 14% for stock and rural domestic purposes and 4% for industry, particularly power generation. The Government has several broad strategies to maximise the sustainable supply of water to support economic growth in industries requiring water. These strategies are focused on planning for sustainable development, facilitating greater water trading, improving water use efficiency and encouraging water-recycling opportunities.

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