10 Reasons why the Proposed Traveston Crossing Dam
is not an appropriate solution to
S E Q’s water problems.
1 - What Water Supply Security! 2 3
4 5 6 7
8 9 10
The proposed dam will
not help in the current drought. If it does not rain in the
major catchments in 2008,
dam will not be constructed
until 2012.
Will it be the saviour
for water supply security for the future?
• Current Demand for water
is 400,000 megalitres per annum. 1 megalitre
(ML) is 1 million
litres - about what an Olympic swimming pool holds
• The Unconstrained Demand
for water in the Year 2050 is 930,000
megalitres per annum
• The Government claims
that Traveston Stage 1 will provide 70,000
megalitres per year - which is less than 10 % of the
unconstrained
demand in the year 2050
• Traveston Stage 2 at 110,000 megalitres per annum is only a marginal
improvement.
1 2 - How well would it have performed during the current
drought? 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
The Deputy Premier, Anna
Bligh stated on 30 March that "if the dam has been
built two to three years ago
it would be close to full now". Three years before then is
April 2004.
In response to a
Question on Notice regarding this specific statement at the
Federal Senate Inquiry
on
subsequently advised that “if Traveston had been built prior to 2003 … it would
have been at approximately
16% in April 2007”.
This response was based
on the case of a dam being built in October 2002
and being full in April
2004, which is quite a head start on the case of a dam
being built in April 2004
which would have started empty. In fact, the dam
would be empty if it was
constructed in April 2004.
1 2 3 - How Cost
Effective Is It Really? 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
In a full page newspaper
advertisement regarding the Traveston Dam on
Saturday 22 July,
Premier Beattie said that cost effectiveness was one of the
factors which the Government
based its decision on to proceed with the Traveston
Dam
option.
The State Government has consistently used the Dam
Options
Report prepared by consulting firm GHD as their justification.
The GHD Dam Options
report lists the Traveston Dam with a yield (annual
supply) of 215,000 megalitres, a storage volume of 1.1 million megalitres and
a cost of $1bn. The unit
cost per megalitre of yield is therefore $4,695. This
puts it fourth on a list of
potential dam sites around SEQ.
The truth is that Traveston Stage 1 has a yield of 70,000 megalitres,
a storage
volume of 157,000 megalitres and a cost of $1.7bn. The cost per megalitre of
yield is therefore $24,000,
making it the most expensive of any option.
An independent report by
the
of water from the Traveston Dam at between $3.40 and $4.65 per kilolitre
(Stage 1 / Stage 2) and
the cost of desalinating sea water at $2.06 to $2.55
per kilolitre (depending on
the size of the plant). A kilolitre of water is 1,000
litres (about what a
house uses in one day).
1 2 3 4 - The Alternatives by a leading
The
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.
Professor White's report
found that Traveston Dam is an expensive and unnecessary
component of
Qld Government supply
and demand projections, analysed options based on
their cost for each kilolitre
of water gained, their capacity to provide drought
relief and their ability to
provide longer term water security. The analysis
proved that Traveston Dam is expensive, unhelpful for drought relief
and not
needed for the long term water
security of the region.
Needless to say,
Professor White’s work has been criticised by the State Government
in an unprofessional,
misleading and technically flawed response. Professor
White has challenged the
State Government to undertake a proper review of both
documents by an independent third
party.
1 2 3 4 5 - Is The Proposed Traveston Crosing Dam Shallow? 6
7 8 9 10
The proposed dam is very
shallow; however the Queensland Government has
gone to extraordinary
lengths to prove that it is not by comparing it with a few
selected dams in the north of
the State where there is heavy tropical rainfall.
Anyway you look at it, Traveston is shallow because
it is located on alluvial flood
plain, and it will be subject
to substantial evaporation and seepage losses, major
problems with aquatic weed
infestation, and would destroy forever some of the
best farming land in
1 2 3 4 5 6 - What have They Been Doing for the Last 18 Years? 7 8 9 10
One of the first things
that the Qld Labor party did when it won office in
1989 was
to scrap the Wolfdene Dam.
Somebody obviously
decided that we needed more water 18 years ago. So what
happened after Wolfdene was scrapped?
Henry Palaszczuk, Premier Beattie's Water Minister at the time of
the Traveston
decision said (in 1989) that
"the cost of desalination of sea water is continuing to
decrease while the cost of
acquiring land for dams and the cost of construction is
continuing to increase and that
all possible dam sites for future urban water supplies
should be protected now by
Government legislation. Anyone proposing to
construct a home in a possible
dam area should be informed that the area is such
- a possible
dam site" (more about desalination as a footnote to this list).
The Queensland State
Government therefore set about purchasing the land for
four smaller dams around SEQ
- Borumba and Amamoor Dams in the Mary
Catchment, Wyaralong in the
dams did they build - zero!
They waited until a water supply crisis to announce a
completely new and previously
unsupported dam at Traveston
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 - What About the Track Record of
the State Government in
The State Government has
held up the recently completed Paradise Dam on the
with the proposed dam at Traveston Crossing. But how good is it?
In the late 1990's, the
World Bank commissioned an extensive study into the
impact of dam construction
world wide and established international guidelines
for the development of new
dams if you had to build them.
Five years on from the
World Commission on Dams, the World Wildlife Fund
published a report on how
countries around the world had faired since 1999. Of
all the hundreds of dams
constructed around the world since 1999, the report
picked out six dams for special
mention as examples of what not to do.
One of those was the
Paradise Dam, on the
Is this the level of
environmental excellence which the Queensland Government
really aspires to? Worse than
that, the Paradise Dam is now close to
empty. How can we trust the
Government to get it right this time?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 - Do Fish Ladders Really Work? 9 10
The way the Queensland
Government proposes to protect endangered fish
species is through a fish
ladder. The only problem is that the fish do not know
how to use them and while
some fish might survive in a dam, they will not breed
or reproduce. The lungfish
for example, needs shallow riffles and pools to breed
- these
don't exist in a dam. But do the ladders actually work?
Neoceratodus forsteri - lungfish - a “living fossil”
In 2002, the Queensland
Department of Primary Industries (DPI) conducted an
experiment at the Walla Weir on
the
electronically tagged 1,285 lungfish
and monitored their passage through the
fishway 24 hours per day, 7 days per week for a whole year. During that time
only 7 fish (THE MAGNIFICENT
7) successfully navigated the fish ladder. The
comment by DPI at the time was
that "the fishlock does not appear to be
providing
optimal passage for fish".
On the ABC's 7.30 report
on 22 June the Premier stated "It (the fish ladder at
Paradise Dam which is
empty!) seems to be working effectively as far as I am
concerned".
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - What About Stage 2 - is it on or off? 10
The CEO of
referral notice to the Federal
Government under the Federal Environment
Act said “At this stage
it is not considered prudent to seek full approval for
Stage 2 as the current
planning horizon does not envisage construction for
another 28 years. With rapid
changes in technology, population
projections, climate change and
assessment requirements, a different
course of action may be
considered more appropriate at the time.”
However, in February
2007, the Premier of Queensland publicly
apologised for wrongly saying
during the election Campaign that Stage 2
of Traveston
Dam would not be needed if recycled water was given the go
ahead. The Premier has stated,
“We have to build the dam as it is (ie.
Stage
2).
I said what I said, but the reality is that the drought is worse and
I’m sorry but what I
said then was wrong”.
So who is right? It
would seem that referral of Stage 2 of the proposed
Dam to the Federal
Environment Minister is now mandatory to comply with
the objects and intent of
the Federal legislation.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 - What About
the Water Grid. Is it a Good Idea?
• The water which is
currently available on the
needed for future planned
growth on the
water from this area to send
to
• The SEQ water grid
simply delays the inevitable so that we all run out
of water together. Moving
water around in a circle does not create
one drop of new water - but
it does use vast quantities of power.
• The water grid is
dinosaur technology - moving electricity around a
grid makes sense because it
does not weigh anything. Water is very
heavy and the cost in moving
it large distances around SEQ is
enormous.
• For example, if 25% of
the current demand for water is moved around
the grid, that equates to
100,000 ML (100 million tons). This will
consume vast quantities of
power – but it does not produce one drop
of extra water.