Twelve months ago the intrepid Stop Press team embarked on a 4 day, 1800 km trip to see at first hand the plight of many of southeast Queensland's dams. While it began as a quest to visually document dry dams, it has since led to much greater involvement in the whole water debate.

Just days before our departure, the first photograph of a low Wivenhoe Dam had appeared in the Courier Mail. It was stark and unsettling - drying, cracked mud where there should have been water.

Its publication, though, was something of a breakthrough since most photographs of dams show them brimming full and, more often than not, with spillways thundering. People in such photographs seem to be either water engineers, invariably beaming smiles, or visitors recreating on lush lawns bordering full storages whose rich blueness owes more than a little to colour retouching.

What a different picture we found!

Not just recently uncovered, drying, cracked mud but a gradual depletion over many years. Moogerah, for example hadn't overtopped for more than a decade.

Our travels took us to Somerset, Wivenhoe, Bjelke-Petersen, Atkinson, Moogerah, and Maroon, a fair smattering of south-east Queensland's dams, as well as up north to the then recently-constructed Paradise Dam.

Our photographs and article were picked up by a number of newspapers and our website www.stoppress.com.au has had heavy traffic, and many requests to use photographs.

While we were on our travels, Premier Peter Beattie fronted large meetings at both Beaudesert and Gympie and unveiled further details of his plan to build more dams, at Traveston Crossing on the Mary River and at Wyaralong near Boonah.

In a long term drought, when our dams were failing, it seemed to the Premier that the obvious solution was to build more. Others would argue that the water crisis was in fact due to our total reliance on dams.

In the meantime, all turned an optimistic eye to the heavens hoping for good rain in the coming wet season.

While the ensuing twelve months have seen a host of water-related initiatives, they most notably haven't seen major rainfall, either in the existing catchments or in those of the two proposed dams.

Initiatives such as rainwater tank rebates and waterwise retrofits have been enthusiastically taken up by householders while public acceptance of recycled water being returned to Wivenhoe dam as part of supply has been impressive. The last twelve months have also seen a far greater realisation of the role of climate change in the water cycle.

After all, it isn’t just southeast Queensland's dams that are low; those of Sydney, Newcastle, Goulburn, Adelaide, Perth as well as a host of local authorities across the nation are faring no better. Malcolm Turnbull, who replaced Ian Campbell as federal Environment Minister pointed out that a 21% reduction in Perth's rainfall had lead to a 64% reduction of inflow into its dams.

According to WA Water, Perth's dams are now providing just 33% of the water they used to.

Add to this a federal senate inquiry into Traveston Dam and other options and it's no exaggeration to say that the water debate has dominated the past year.

In evidence given to the Senate inquiry, the Australian Water Association added a professional slant to what many have been saying for ages.

Dams are only part of the mix, and one of the things that AWA has been very concerned to bring forward is that our reliance on rainwater as a resource for urban communities -and, indeed, for regional communities-has to be declining in the current climate.

We have trapped almost all of the major river systems in our developed areas. AWA has also taken a fairly forward position in regard to indirect potable recycling (IPR). We believe that the Queensland government steps in relation to IPR are to be applauded and we will do what we can to support an evaluation of the expansion of IPR as a water supply source.

If we plumb rainwater tanks as an additional supply source and roll that back into the household use, that in fact becomes an additional resource to go back to treatment plants, to go back into the water supply.
AWA evidence to Senate Inquiry Canberra June 4 2007

So twelve months on… the water level in every dam we'd visited has diminished [see graph]. We went back to Somerset and Wivenhoe Dams - these being the two major suppliers of Brisbane's water. (A third supplier, North Pine Dam had been taken out of service in the previous months as its level was at just 13.7% ).

The lavishly appointed Information Centre at Wivenhoe Dam showed only visuals of the mandatory full dam/ thundering spillways scenario, while outside, an entirely different reality presented itself. With its volume at just under 15.9% (compared with around 30 % last year), there are acres of freshly-exposed mud, boat ramps closed to public use... their reach hopelessly short of the receding water line, fish-cleaning tables five minutes walk from the shore.

These figures are far from atypical. While good rain in some parts of the country has raised some levels, we returned home to find ABC Radio visiting Lake Eucumbene in the Snowy Mountains. With its level falling to a record 11%, it is now revealing the town of Old Adaminaby which was flooded in 1957 as part of the dam's construction. After fifty years, the Eucumbene River is once more flowing beneath Six Mile Bridge.

http://www.abc.net.au/canberra/stories/s1943764.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/canberra/stories/s1943592.htm

If we've learnt anything in the past twelve months, it's been the folly of having all our water supply eggs in the one basket and of trying to counter climate change by building more dams.

Last year I used the analogy of a poor man, on finding his wallet empty, deciding the obvious solution to his financial woes was to get more wallets. It resonated with many as they come to realize that the promise of more dams just doesn't hold water.