Damned decision

The decision last week by Kevin Rudd, delivered by his environment minister Peter Garrett, to veto the proposed Traveston dam near Gympie represents a failure of governments all round to secure adequate water supplies for a rapidly growing south-east Queensland.

By concluding that the proposed dam would have "unacceptable impacts on matters of national environmental significance", the minister has made a decision in favour of fish and rear end-breathing turtles over the water needs of people.

And it is not as if the species would have been endangered by the dam.  As with other such constructions, creatures and human needs can co-exist.

As a consequence, the south-east corner of the state will be deprived of water storage infrastructure capacity of at least 75,000 megalitres each year, building up to 150,000 megalitres to 2035 as the regional population expands.

The Bligh government already spent $545 million to resume land in the Mary Valley area.  Now it faces an embarrassing backflip of offering properties for sale back to their original owners.

With Traveston now relegated to the dustbin, there is a clear need for alternatives if the state is to cater for the expected growth in south-east Queensland residents from 2.8 million today to 4.4 million in two decades' time.

Already Premier Anna Bligh is softening up local residents for significant water price hikes for the financing and production of water from up to four new, energy-intensive desalination plants stretching from the Sunshine to Gold coasts.

Typically, desalination costs five times as much as a dam to deliver water to urban areas.  This is the implicit tax penalty that Rudd and Garrett have imposed on Queenslanders.

Given the hefty price tag for desal, the relative costs and benefits of alternative options such as raising the capacity of existing dams should be assessed as a matter of priority.

Other policies, such as recycling and the rollout of rainwater tanks including in urban areas, will also have to be pursued now that the door on the new big dam option is in the process of being closed shut.

Notwithstanding that Peter Garrett previously approved the 21,000 megalitre capacity Wyaralong dam near Beaudesert, the veto powers of the federal government sends a signal that there will never be a new major dam in Australia at least on Rudd's watch.

The lack of sufficient water security confronting south-east Queenslanders today is also a product of another fateful decision, albeit made almost two decades ago.

After its election in 1989 the Labor government, led by Wayne Goss and advised by current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, cancelled plans to proceed with the Wolfdene dam on the Albert River.

The cancelation of the Wolfdene project by Goss and Rudd no doubt proved to be a popular one amongst the emerging environmental movement in Queensland.

However this decision, which reeked of political opportunism, quickly emerged as a curse bedevilling water policy in Queensland for decades to come.

With a capacity equivalent to that of the Wivenhoe dam, Wolfdene would have played a critical role in boosting the region's absolute water storage capacity in the face of prolonged droughts.

Instead of the buffer of greater water reserves, Queenslanders living in the south-east have borne the major inconveniences of inefficient and often heavy-handed water rationing juxtaposed with a massive increase in the local population including interstate and overseas migration.

From the wasted opportunity of Wolfdene to the travesty of Traveston, no level of government has emerged unscathed from the murky depth of troubles that is Queensland water politics.

Even worse, the lack of foresight when it comes to major dam developments have done little but to threaten the quality of life for which Brisbane and its surrounds have been long renowned.

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