Video footage of Borumba Dam spillway during a flood event

[travesto]

Video footage of the spillway at Borumba Dam (on Yabba Creek) passing a flood flow in Feb 1999. A second video excerpt illustrates the sort of problem that an overflowing spillway poses to an aquatic freshwater turtle. These videos were shown to members of the federal assessment team by representative of SaveTheMaryRiver to illustrate how ineffectual the proposed measures for protecting the stream channel and riparian zones downstream of the Traveston Crossing dam are likely to be.

The video shows a flow of about 1600 tonnes/second flowing over a 32m drop into a solid rock stream channel. Even with the operation of spillway gates, the Traveston spillway is designed to pass 3000 tonnes/second over a 35m drop into the unconsolidated alluvium of one of the most unstable section of the Mary River floodplain. This sort of flood event could be expected more than once per decade at Traveston Crossing.

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