By Steve Burgess

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.

As a recent case in point, problems with the State Government’s figures regarding evapo­ration and seepage losses are easy to verify by anyone with the ability to read or do prim­ary school mathematics.

In Figure 8.5 of their submission to the Fed­eral Senate Inquiry, the Queensland Govern­ment attempted to show that the Traveston Crossing site would have a net annual loss of 520 millimetres to evaporation and seepage.

They state that this is even less than Borumba dam with a net loss of 539mm/year.

This implies that if no water flowed out of the dam, and no water flowed in, the water le­vel would fall at less than 1.5mm/day on aver­age — an absolutely amazing achievement by world standards.

However, if you look up the evaporation and seepage allowance that is written in to page 24 of Sunwater’s licence for Borumba dam, they actually use a figure of 1251mm per annum.

Therefore, the estimated losses used by Sunwater for Borumba Dam are 2.3 times greater than the figure given to the Senate. The climate at Borumba dam is virtually iden­tical to the climate at the Traveston Crossing site, and is in a Geologlcal location with far less potential for seepage.

On another siniple issue, the 3D computer-generated flyover of the dam concept present­ed to the senators and shown in the television and print media clearly shows a water level at about 80 metres above sea level.

The actual full supply level of the dam pro­posal referred to the Federal Government for approval is about 71m above sea level, giving an average depth of water within the dam (when full) of five metres.

The water level shown to the senators and to the public represents a water volume more than 3.7 times the actual volume that has been referred to the Federal minister for approval. This is black and white evidence of deliberate attempts to mislead the Senate and the public.

I do not want to believe that these sorts of errors are due to simple incompetence, be­cause I know there are many competent and professional scientists and engineers work­ing in the Queensland public service.

Therefore I can only conclude that this sort of misinformation is being generated by the political corruption of proper decision mak­ing and planning processes in this state.

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