Dear Mr Rudd
Re: PROPOSED TRAVESTON CROSSING
DAM.
I commend your Environment Minister
Peter Garrett for commissioning independent studies
into the Queensland Government’s proposal
to dam the Mary River at Traveston Crossing.
The studies by Professor Bunn,
Associate Professor Walker and Dr Kuchling raise
serious concerns about the dam’s impacts
and support the numerous submissions to both the
Senate Enquiry and the dam’s EIS. The downstream
impacts, particularly on the Great Sandy Strait,
Ramsar wetlands and Fraser Island need to be similarly
assessed, especially in light of the EIS claims
that they would be minimal.
The Queensland Government always
said it would build this dam if it stacked up
environmentally.
The inescapably obvious fact is that it doesn’t.
Associate Professor Walker says
it so plainly,
‘The Traveston Crossing
Dam proposal spotlights an extremely sensitive
site for river conservation in Australia. Any
new dam warrants careful analysis, given our national
legacy of degraded rivers and declining biodiversity,
but the present proposal deserves the closest
scrutiny because it could decide the fate of a
number of imperiled species.
Among them the Mary River
Turtle and the Australian Lungfish are survivors
of lineages that began hundreds of millions of
years ago. They are internationally significant,
and no less symbolic than the giant panda. We
know little of the biology of these species, and
other fauna and flora of the Mary River, and the
threats they face are compounded by our ignorance.
We have often taken refuge
in the belief that there are many steps on the
road to extinction, and no single action could
be held responsible. For some of these species,
including the turtle and lungfish, we are near
the end of that road.’
It is the sign of a good
government that can review its decisions in the
light of new independent information. It is the
sign of a bad one that commissions its own studies
to justify its already adopted position.
Your government states that healthy
waterways are a priority. Recent attention on
the sorry plight of the Murray system should make
us cautious rather than cavalier.
Traveston Dam would cost
us dearly.