'Don’t Let the Mary Become the Murray!'
LAST year when river campaigner Steve Posselt set out on his epic journey by foot and kayak from Brisbane to Adelaide via the Murray-Darling, he entered a world of unknowns.
For four months he paddled and walked, often dragging his wheeled kayak behind him as he wound his way through four states of Australia.
Steve plans to be at Traveston Crossing for the second anniversary of the State Government’s dam decision on April 27 when he will draw the media spotlight to the heart of the fight to save the Mary River.
He will then continue downstream through Maryborough, the Great Sandy Strait in the lee of Fraser Island, before paddling southward along the coast and back to Brisbane. The entire trip is estimated to take five weeks.
Steve’s earlier trip down the Murray-Darling system gave his Australian audience a fascinating journey as he made regular reports on the state of the rivers and spoke at many venues along the way.
The former water engineer is passionate about rivers and educating people about climate change, and it is this that fuelled the trip and turned him into a modern day adventurer.
Steve reached Adelaide at the end of September and is now turning his attention to the Mary River near Gympie where, despite massive opposition, the State Government is forging ahead with plans to build the Traveston Crossing Dam.
But Steve’s “involvement” amounts to much more than lobbying or letter writing. On April 12, he and his kayak will depart Brisbane paddling up the Brisbane River, across Wivenhoe Dam then across Somerset Dam on the Stanley River.
A gruelling walk with kayak will be necessary as Steve climbs out of the Stanley catchment near Woodford, climbs to Bellthorpe at the southern end of the Conondale Ranges and descends into the upper catchment of the Mary.
As with the Murray trip, Steve will maintain a regularly updated website on his travels and it is anticipated he will be joined by other paddlers along the way.
His message is plain. He can see the writing on the wall about climate change and its impact on our traditional methods of water supply and sees as sheer folly the addition of another dam when dams across Australia have been letting us down.
When he adds peak oil to the equation, he just shakes his head at the wisdom of flooding good farming land near urban centres when there are less expensive, more reliable alternatives.
Before setting out, Steve will give three presentations on his Murray Darling expedition as fund-raisers for the Mary trip: Noosa at the J on April 2 at 7.30pm, Gympie Civic Centre on April 3 at 7.30pm and Maryborough Town Hall on April 4 at 7.30pm.
Media contacts: Steve Posselt 0438 138 982
Ian Mackay 54460124
Kaili Parker-Price 0419 672947
1 comment:
The great sandy straights and our marine park are threatened by the damming of all of our rivers that is damming to the Burrum River was completed in December 2007.
The story of the Mary River is just like that of the Burrum and the Burrnett all dammed by labour.
The Mary like the Burnett and the Burrum to the north will be choked of life
The gates installed at Lenthalls Dam on the Burrum River were supposed to release flow from september through to march.
The gates failed to lower to provide environmental flow to the Burrum River from January 2008 to today. The gates do not work as designed now in September 2008 and your local member has done little about this. The affects for the marine park are silting of seagrass beds and mangroves and silging of the mouth of the Burrum River - this is happending right now on your doorstep.
The failure of the gates to lower to release flood flow shows the kind of infrastructure management the people of Traveston will experince when the mary is further dammed.
This is our story and your future story:
I have concerns that queenslands water infrastructure managers may not be up to the responsibilities involved.
By this I mean the states, water corporations like Wide Bay Water
and local government. I belive our local water operator may be handed more power by the council.
Our own experience of dam gate failure at Lenthalls Dam on the Burrum River is telling - it is indicative of an inability to understand risk and manage public saftey issues
You would imagine that Dam infrastructure in Australia is safe - however our experience on the Burrum River in QLD shows just how easy it is to become a fatality when Dam Infrastructure fails.
Gates constructed in December 2007 at Lenthalls Dam on the heavily impounded Burrum River failed to lower to release flood water as designed in Febuary 2008.
Wide Bay Water was the constructing authority and responsible for the design and operation of the dam gate infrastructure.
Our upstream farm house, where the tributaries join the dam proper was cut of when flood water continued to back up much higher than the constructing authority Wide Bay Water had predicted the water levels would ever go.
Three family members were stuck at our farm house. The emergency evacuation plan found in the Lenthalls Dam Emergency Action Plan called for evacuation after water levels reached RL26.91 - water levels reached 27.4 at the dam wall flowing over the blocked gates and backed up to RL28.5 at our house. No one evacuated the famuily members stranded in rising water.
No one from the constructing authority Wide Bay Water contacted us to undertake evacuation or explain the risk we faced due to Lenthalls Dam Crest Gate Failure.
We believe the CEO Tim Waldron was overseas at conference when the event happed. The Operations manuals for the dam place responsibilty with the CEO as does the action plan. He has not been called to account for his failure to take responsible action to ensure an evacuation would occur in his abscence if required.
If the rain event had not stopped the three people cut off at our flood impacted farm house would have been inundated by metres of water.
We heard about the dam failure from other locals close to the dam wall who had heard the gates have failed - we now have full evidence to verify the dam gate failure.
We were very lucky the rain event that caused the flooding to back up over the failed dam gate, stopped.
see the article as ABC reported it:
Resident fears dam gates risk flooding
Posted Wed May 21, 2008 8:26am AEST
Updated Wed May 21, 2008 8:25am AEST
• Map: Hervey Bay 4655
A land-holder upstream of a major dam south-west of Hervey Bay says multi-million dollar barriers on the storage are broken, putting her family at risk of flooding.
Queensland Deputy Premier Paul Lucas will officially open the $16 million project at Lenthalls Dam, which is designed to more than double the storage’s capacity.
In what is claimed to be an Australian first, the two metre high crest gates sink when the dam reaches capacity to prevent flooding upstream and provide for environmental flows.
But Esther Allan says in February the gates jammed, causing water to back up onto her property.
“This is an extremely expensive piece of infrastructure. Ratepayers paid for this and their expectation would be that it would be operable,” she said.
“If it wasn’t, we need to know why - not only because our family’s safety was put at risk, but because ratepayers expect to get a result from the infrastructure they pay for.”
The local government corporation that runs Lenthalls Dam says the gates do not work, but it was monitoring the rising water.
Wide Bay Water general manager David Wiskar says adjustments were needed during the dam’s commissioning and are continuing.
“The gates were all needing some fine-tuning. At the moment we were able to complete that tuning on three of the gates,” he said.
“There’s two that remain to be done, but we’re waiting until the level in the dam falls to an adequate level to [do] those final two.”
The Lenthalls Dam Gates are still not fully operational today September 2008 and heading into the QLD summer flood season.
Climate Change will continue to place increased pressure on infrastructure in Australia the frequency of extreme storm and weather events will be a counterpoint to extreme drought.
If the infrastructure like Lenthalls Dam cannot be managed safely now - those who live in areas affected by damming have much to worry about.
Climate change will increase the risks posed by failed dam infrastructure.
The risks remain for all of those who live on dammed river systems - the Mary River and the Burrum.
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