Valley Of The Dammed

The more that is known about the Traveston Crossing Dam proposal on the Mary River, the worse it looks! Queensland Premier Peter Beattie announced on Thursday, April 27, 2006 that the Queensland Government proposes to build a mega-dam (more than 1.3 times the area of Sydney Harbour) on the Mary River at Traveston Crossing that will inundate the central Mary Valley in Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland and re-direct the water of the Mary into Brisbane. Scientific evidence now indicates that this will seriously degrade the 200km of river downstream of the proposal and greatly effect the Great Sandy Straits by stopping all fresh water flow to the sea from the river for a significant proportion of the time. Until the announcement, no information had been made public about ANY planning procedures or studies to justify the decision. There had been absolutely NO public consultation with any of the local stakeholders regarding this decision before the announcement.

Following the Premier's June 2006 announcement of his formation of a company to proceed with the dam project - 'Queensland Water Infrastructure Pty Ltd' and the release of the Water Resource Plan legislation for the Mary Basin in July, there has been the opportunity to investigate the limited scientific, engineering and financial information that has become available.

It still looks as if the decision to spend billions of dollars of public money on a potential environmental and social disaster has been made on the basis of political expediency rather than good science, engineering and planning. This is surely not appropriate behaviour for a "smart state".

The matter has now moved into the realm of Federal politics, requiring the assessment of a limited range of some of the environmental impacts of the project under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. However, a full federal enquiry into all aspects of the actions of the State Government to date with respect to the proposal is required to bring out the true facts underlying the proposal and allow some justice to the people of Queensland.

This information is from www.savethemaryriver.com - the website of the Save the Mary River Coordinating Group, a local community support organization formed in response to the proposal. Their site collates information about the proposal and assists in the public debate on the issue of dams on the Mary River and water and planning procedures in Queensland in general.

This photo album addresses some of the human aspects to the proposal - the thousands of Mary Valley residents facing an uncertain future. It is far from comprehensive, just a small snapshot of parts of the valley, events, projects, campaigns and is a tribute to all those working so hard to stop this flawed project before any more damage is done.

March 2007