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Saving the Mary River

By Jenny Stewart - posted Thursday, 8 May 2008


If the climate continues to dry out, it is a moot point whether we should be encouraging more people to move to areas where water supplies are already stretched. Building dams is ultimately self-defeating, as it simply encourages more people to shift.

Not building them forces us to think about real sustainability, which may well involve population caps. At the very least, it means that towns and cities start learning to live within their environmental means.

Volumetric pricing of water encourages us all to be more economical, but surely in this driest of continents, after two centuries of over-allocating our water, it is time to lay off the few untapped sources of the stuff that remain.

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The pity of it all is that, before the dam was sprung on them, community-based catchment management was already well-advanced. Local grazier, environmental scientist and activist Glenda Pickersgill showed me one such project, on the stretch of the river that will lie directly downstream of the dam wall. One reason such unusual animals are found in the river is because of its flow patterns: pools and shallow stretches connected by riffles (fast-flowing stretches of highly-oxygenated water).

Local water care groups had planted trees along the bank, to help restore the pattern of flow at this particular spot. But once the dam gets going, the river will inevitably lose much of its natural flow regime.

While the animals await their fate, the human inhabitants of the valley are already being affected by the stress of an unknown future. The ladies in the gift shop at Kandanga tell me that their community is already unravelling. The QWI has already voluntarily acquired several hundred properties from their owners. Some are leased back, but the effect on the confidence of the district has been marked. The electrician left a week ago, and it is getting harder and harder to find tradespeople.

Even in the somewhat murky annals of Queensland public administration, the QWI is a wonder of administrative opacity and power. It is not a statutory body (which would give it a clear mandate and accountabilities), but a company wholly-owned by the Queensland government and established under federal companies legislation.

This is convenient for a number of reasons. QWI can do whatever the Queensland government wants it to do, yet at the same time, it has an identity separate from government.

QWI has the best of both worlds in terms of public accountability. As a controlled entity of the Department of Infrastructure, its financial affairs are not separately identified in that Department’s annual reports. At the same time, as a “private” company, it does not have to provide financial returns to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission.

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Yet if the dam goes ahead, this vehicle of convenience, part land-acquirer, part community strategist, part infrastructure builder, part environmental assessment manager, will be responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the implementation of the mitigating strategies that will certainly be required if the unique fauna of the river are to have any chance of survival.

Juggling these very different priorities is an onerous job. It is worth noting in this connection that the CEO of QWI was also the General Manager of Burnett Water, developer of the Paradise Dam on the Burnett River. A recent audit (by the Commonwealth) made adverse findings on the implementation of a number of environmental strategies associated with the Paradise Dam.

Once the Queensland Coordinator-General has made his decision on the EIS (and it is hard to imagine that it will be other than an approval), the fate of the Mary River will effectively lie in Peter Garrett’s hands.

In one sense, the decision should be clear-cut - there is simply too much to lose if the dam goes ahead. On the other hand, the pressure will be immense to approve the project (even if with conditions).

If the Minister went into politics to make a difference (and one assumes that he did), this will be a crucial test of that determination.

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About the Author

Dr Jenny Stewart is Professor of Public Policy in the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Jenny Stewart

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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