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.