Well...yesterday we received an email from Nanango Qld Electorate Rep with a reply letter to her attached from the new Qld Govt saying they haven't been allocated any money for next stage on Feasibility Costs to build the Linville Dam for Brisbane flood mitigation so will just sit on it. (We have investment land up that way so am on their update list) Just last Dec it was announced this was the leading option along with one near Ipswich - both Dam sites were finally selected after years of tax payer funded studies that looked at & systematically rejected over 40 other locations to choose these as best options. Construction would create HUGE amount of jobs plus save Insurance companies BILLIONS of dollars in payouts & now they are again sitting on the backburner...?
What I discovered, which demonstrates another crazy amount of our money wasted by Govt bodies, is a PDF Scoping Report dated 2005 listing possible Dam sites in Qld stating Water Storage Capacity Megalitres (ML), Environmental Impact Studies (EIS), prospective costs & many other statistics to help in their decision making. You'd always first look at how many MLs a Dam can hold & this report stated Traveston at 668,000 ML with second biggest being Linville at 416,000 ML, BUT soon as you read further in the summary it is blindingly clear to any lay person that a Dam at Traveston, though saying it could hold more, was a wide, shallow area model which would evaporate quickly so this capacity was unlikely ever to be reached (was mainly for water storage too & not designed to protect Gympie in a flood situation...huh?) while Upper Linville was a deep Dam model built between 2 existing hills so not prone to same plus numerous tributaries lead into the Brisbane River so a Dam here would hold all this water back from going into Wivenhoe Dam (where they released the overflow to cause the flooding & loss of lives) & this worked for both flood mitigation & drought relief. For those interested in diagrams of where that water comes from & the possible dam site area coverage: http://southburnett.com.au/news2/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/dammap2.jpg http://www.debfrecklington.com.au/documents/Brisbane_river_282_1_LINVILLE_building_MIN_20140611A.pdf
Anyhow...the most craziest behaviour & waste of money I've seen was when Anna Bligh suddenly bulldosed ahead reclaiming 'prime agricultural land' at premium prices where Traveston Dam was outlined to go - which was listed exactly as that in this report as was the fact that it was home to over 300 farmers with centuries of family history...??? Linville Dam (which would have similar ML capacity after allowing for Travestons bad evaporation factor) listed only 34 people to be displaced & 30 properties reclaimed
and Construction costs at the time were a third of the cost of Traveston (not including extra money for buying land at ridiculous prices around Traveston) and has been the obvious choice since the 60's as the most efficient place to build one to help Brisbane.
It was like Anna just read 1 line of the report regarding the ML capacity then went & threw all the money at this area? After turfing all those people off their farms & out of their livelihoods they then canned the Dam project stating 'we now realise it was going to be too shallow & would not have held the capacity we thought nor would it protect Gympie from flooding - it would also flood the historical area of Kandanga'...? What on earth were they thinking.....it is a disgrace that this waste of money has just been swept under the carpet which helped send Qld broke! How is it that whatever these Politicians do is not really ever accountable for...?
I think the Insurance companies should get together & build the damn Dam at Linville (apparent cost now about $550 Million while 10 yrs ago in 2005 it was $265M...?) This would save them collectively about $2.5 Billion in future flood damage so it makes financial sense as it should also to the Govt who forks out our money whenever we have an event happen...how do they not get it?
Have probably lost most readers up to here but anyway...I find this topic interesting...especially when you come across hidden reports online that expose all the facts & can't fathom why we pay so much money for them yet the Politicians never read them?
Katy
