The Queensland State Government can be commended for many of the drought response measures it has already put in place – such as the support of rainwater tanks, the Tugan desalination plant , the Western Corridor recycling scheme, and demand reduction and efficiency measures. The University of Technology Sydney has undertaken a report of the water supply needs in SEQ. The report found that the water supply needs could be met by implementing the drought response measures that the Government is currently working on (less the Traveston Dam) and extending the current demand management initiatives with a particular emphasis on water smart new development.

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Updated on Wednesday, August 15, 2007 at 09:48AM by stevem

I have heard from a few reliable sources that the official ‘party’ line within the Queensland labor party regarding the impact of the Traveston Crossing Proposal on lungfish goes something like this: “They haven’t bred in the Mary River for over forty years - so their only hope for species survival is a captive breeding programme and Traveston won’t make any significant difference to the chances of species survival if a captive breeding programme is in place.”

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Updated on Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 06:04PM by stevem

Updated on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 10:53AM by stevem

Updated on Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 10:58AM by stevem

BE warned - images of the Mary River choked with weed could indeed be a crystal ball glance at the future, should dual events occur. If river flows con­tinue to be compromised by a lack of rain events, or by the building of the flawed Traveston Crossing Dam, these “dead zones” could join to become a continuous strip of lifeless water cut­ting through neighbouring shires. Catchment officer Steve Burgess does not exaggerate when he says this is a major disaster just hanging in the balance.

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BY now I shouldn’t be surprised by the sort of misleading statements that come from some sectors of the Queensland State Government with respect to the Traveston Crossing Dam proposal. However I am amazed by the absolute mathematical ineptitude of recent attempts to mislead the Australian Senate and the Queenslard public.

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Updated on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 11:23AM by stevem

Updated on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 10:05PM by stevem

Updated on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 09:46AM by stevem

Updated on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 11:03AM by stevem

As many groups as possible with an interest in the Upper Mary, Obi, Maroochy and Mooloolah catchments familiarise themselves with the implications of this proposal, and co-operate in writing submissions on the TOR for the EIS. (DEADLINE is 14th MAY) As many groups as possible formulate a case to present to the Federal DEW assessor (Alex Rankin) to reconsider her decision in light of the clear implications the project has for EPBC listed species (particularly the cod) on the grounds that the proponent did not provide any advice at all as to the likely implications of the project on stream flows and subsequent impacts on EPBC matters in the Mary. From the information submitted by the proponent it would have been impossible for the assessor to have any idea of the impact on these EPBC matters.

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Updated on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 11:26AM by stevem

Another Valley resident, Steve Burgess, presented an information session at Griffith University yesterday on the work he and Darren Edward have done auditing the State Government’s often questionable data on hydrology and engineering matters. Sen Bartlett said the aim of last night’s information session was to try to give Brisbane people the facts on the dam and the threats it poses to the environment and the community. “We need to get Brisbane people on-side,” he said yesterday. “The Government has already programmed themselves to ignore people outside Brisbane.”

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In addition to the Federal Government’s legal obligation to administer the EPBC Act fully and appropriately with respect to the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam, the proposal falls clearly within the scope of at least 4 other major federal policies under which the Federal and Queensland governments have mutual obligations in the form of signed bilateral agreements. These joint Federal/State policies are the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality (NAPSWQ) National Water Initiative (NWI) National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan (NBCCAP) National Agriculture and Climate Change Action Plan (NACCAP)

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There are many inequities that have resulted from the rushed and ad-hoc approach the State Government and Queensland Water Infrastructure PL have implemented in buying up land in the Mary Valley (well in advance of gaining the approvals required to proceed with the development proposal under Federal and State legislatiuon).

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Updated on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 10:55AM by stevem

Took advantage of a visiting friend and his family with a video camera to spend some time in the river today. Tried to put some pictures to go with the facts and figures about flows and how the river works. Tried to keep them brief. 3 ultra short video clips (about 2 mins each)

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Updated on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 10:58AM by stevem

The Queensland Government has to abide by the National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan 2004-2007 which specifically states that they must incorporate climate change projections into existing modelling of catchment hydrology. It specifically outlines a set of actions for catchments outlined in the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, (of which the Mary is a National Funding priority) with respect to maintaining habitat linkages for vulnerable species.

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Updated on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 08:26AM by stevem

Updated on Saturday, January 20, 2007 at 10:28AM by stevem

Updated on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 10:03AM by stevem

Updated on Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 10:57AM by stevem

Updated on Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 11:06AM by stevem

Updated on Sunday, August 3, 2008 at 02:09PM by stevem

Updated on Friday, October 16, 2009 at 07:54AM by stevem

Updated on Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 08:39AM by stevem

A lot of attention has focussed on the Premier’s role in this dam proposal, but there are a number of other powerful people in government and industry pushing for it, or working hard to ‘farce track’ it. I suggest that as you find out more information about the individuals behind the proposal, their interconnections and business interests, you attach them to this thread, in the interests of public information. I will get the ball rolling with a short bio of ROSS ROLFE - who is in the role of chief headkicker for making sure the project goes through without any impediments.

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Yesterday I attended a meeting with two consultants from the State Government’s media relations firm where they discussed the upcoming processes involved in the ‘public consultation’ component of the State Environmental Impact Study. It seems that the consultants have only been hired to keep the public informed of the processes involved in the EIS, not to take any form of public input to the terms of reference or the technical content of the EIS. That is all being handled by QWI and the Co-ordinator-general’s office.

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This is a letter that hints at the extraordinary difficulty that there is in gaining access to the basic scientific information needed to make a meaningful assessment of the likely environmental impacts of the dam. This is the story of one document, which we still have not received at the time of posting. Although supposedly available on request, access to it has been refused many times, even under FOI requests There are many other documents that can tell the same story. In most cases, the scientists responsible for this information have been highly professional and open to frank and honest discussion of the technical issues involved. This is not an indictment on them. There seems to be an administrative filter within the government which subsequently steps in and shuts off the flow of information to the public

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The charts of the spillway modelling showed that the much touted 4 metre reduction of the predicted peak flood height in Gympie during the 1999 flood was only achieved by allowing a seven metre or more rise in water level above the stage one full supply level in the Mary Valley. If this is indicative of the sort of water level rise above the full supply level that is predicted to occur during flood events, how does this fit with the proposed “Kandanga project” in stage 2 where the full supply level coincides with the main street of the town, in the absence of a flood?

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A simple analysis suggests that, if constructed, the proposed dam at Traveston Crossing will replace approximately 76 square kilometres of prime irrigated farmland and the community it supports with a tepid shallow swamp prone to algal blooms, weed infestation and the health risks of mosquito-born disease (like Ross River and Dengue Fever).

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A press statement by Deputy Premier Anna Bligh on the flood mitigation benefits of the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam is positively misleading, according to the research team working for the Save the Mary Co-ordinating Group. “Our long term hydrological modelling of the government’s dam proposal, based on historical flows in the Mary River shows that a dam storage even bigger than the government’s latest proposal would have had almost no flood mitigation effect at all on the recent historic major floods of 1968, 1974 and 1989, and a minor effect only on the 1992 flood, because the dam would have been almost full when those flood events occurred” said Steve Burgess, who has studying the likely hydrological impacts of the dam proposal since its announcement.

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