Send a letter to Penny Wong [see below for letter text]
 
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Dear Senator Wong,

In your address to the 4th Annual Australian Water Summit earlier this year, you stated that “a key element of Water for the Future is to work with the States to develop new sources of water that do not rely entirely on rainfall.” This is essential.

I also share your view that ‘the most pressing challenge is to ensure all Australian governments are responding to the impacts of climate change on our water supplies and the health of our rivers.’

I am concerned by the Queensland Government’s plans to build Traveston Crossing Dam on the Mary River. If it had been operating during 2006/2007, flows to the Great Sandy Strait would have been reduced to less than 25% of the natural state. Yet the Queensland Government says the Great Sandy Strait, Hervey Bay and Fraser Island would not be affected.

The impacts on the Great Sandy Strait and RAMSAR wetlands have not been adequately addressed. Rainfall is predicted to decline and if it were to fall by only 10%, stream flows into the dam would be a cut by a third. Further reductions in environmental flow would be inevitable.

If we are serious about reversing Climate Change, the Queensland Government should be aiming to minimize emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. It has been estimated that aquatic weed infestations, drowned vegetation and pumping to Brisbane add up to more greenhouse gas emissions than a coal-fired power station.

Already, worrying trends across the last decade have seen the Mary River flows cut by around half, similar to what has occurred in the Murray River system. We cannot allow government to Murray the Mary.

The Queensland Water Commission sees Traveston as the last dam to be built in Queensland before turning to desalination plants. I ask your help to assist the state government to fast-track more environmentally sustainable alternatives to the dam and to allow the Mary to continue to function as a healthy waterway.

It would be tragic if your government were to espouse such noble aspirations and then cave in to the Queensland Government’s misguided determination to build this dam.
 
 
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