The story so far:
In April '06, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie made a shock announcement of a dam on the Mary River at Traveston Crossing. Since then, he's handed the reigns of governing Qld to Anna Bligh and left her with a legacy of dubious decision-making. Plentiful research has uncovered that this dam will not provide adequately for Brisbane's water needs, either now or in the future, and the environmental consequences will be catastrophic. Now the decision lies in the hands of the federal government to weigh up the proposal and decide on the future of the Mary River.
NOW IS THE TIME TO TELL THEM WHAT WE THINK!
 
 
So here's what you can do...
 

Use the links below to generate a letter to the key political decision makers involved in the dam approval.
You fill out an online form, and we print & post the letter for you. EASY!

 
 
or pick and choose from the pollies below...
 
 
Kevin Rudd
Prime Minister
Peter Garrett
Environment Minister
Penny Wong
Minister - Climate Change & Water
Anna Bligh
Premier of Queensland
 
Click here to tell your friends! Get them all sending letters too.
 
 
  Toss some $$ our way toward the stamps and printing costs of the massive mailbags heading toward Canberra. We take Paypal and give big thanks!

Click here to donate (you pick the amount - large or small, we appreciate it).
 
 
 

Go shopping online with the No Dam merchandise range
& help spread the word and fund the fight!

Click here to visit the shop

 
 
There's a mountain of reasons to object to this proposal. Get your dam facts straight with these great websites!
 

www.savethemaryriver.com - official campaign site
www.ourgreatsandy.com - coastal impacts
www.stoppress.com.au - activism in pictures
www.swampnews.squarespace.com - news & articles
www.savethemaryriver.com/shop - merchandise
www.facebook.com - visit the Save the Mary River page and become a fan!

 
 
And just in case you thought the campaign was a few whinging farmers somewhere in the Qld bush...
here's a few words from some of our high profile supporters...
 
“Building another dam because there isn't much water in the ones we have, is like seeing there isn't enough money in your wallet and deciding to buy a bigger wallet".
Professor Ian Lowe, President Australian Conservation Foundation.
 
"This is the sort of thing we have come to expect from undemocratic and third-world countries, not from a place like this. This is obviously a river of great value for its biodiversity, and yet you appear to have a government with so little regard for considering other options.”
Patrick McCully, Executive Director, International Rivers Network.
 
"The completion of the Mary River dam would almost certainly push it (the lungfish) to “critically endangered”, and in the long term will lead to its extinction in the wild."
Professor Jean Joss in submission to Senate Inquiry 2007
 
“I have been absolutely staggered by the lack of transparency involved in this decision-making process. I have dealt with a lot of state governments and I have dealt with a lot of non-transparent processes, believe me, but I have never quite seen anything like this.”
Professor Stuart White in evidence to the Senate Inquiry April 2007
 
“It is time the outdated knee-jerk response of building more dams and water storages was confined to the history books. As evidence to this inquiry shows, many existing dams in south-east Queensland have totally failed to deliver reliable water supplies whilst causing immense environmental damage. To keep repeating the mistakes of the past is just plain crazy, particularly when they are such expensive and destructive mistakes.”
Senator Andrew Bartlett, Additional Comments to Senate Inquiry Aug 2007
 
and a few other quotes of relevance to the campaign
 
“Except for global warming, there has been no more drastic alteration of the landscape in the last fifty years than the damming, regulation and diversion of the world’s rivers. The truth is that dam proponents would say just about anything to get a dam project approved.”
Daniel Beard, ex-Commissioner, Bureau of Reclamation, the US government agency that has built more large dams on more rivers than any other body anywhere in the world . (as quoted by Fred Pearce in “When the Rivers Run Dry”)
 
“The Rudd Government will tackle the water crisis with a national plan to invest in water infrastructure, sustain our farming communities, revitalise our rivers and waterways, secure water supplies in our cities and towns and ensure that we become smarter and more efficient in our water usage. The Government will invest in greater use of recycled water, desalination and stormwater.”
From the Prime Minister’s National Plan to solve the Water Crisis”
 
“In our towns and cities, we must secure water supplies for current and future needs, including from a range of new sources that rely less on rainfall given the clear threat climate change poses to traditional water sources. 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.”
Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Penny Wong, April 2008
 
“The status of the Australian lungfish as rare, distinctive and of profound interest to evolutionary biologists makes its conservation much more important than that of an attractive species of bird, say, which has many living relatives. This distinction should be brought to the forefront in making a decision on the proposed dam.”
Editorial, Nature, International Journal of Science, July 2006
 
‘Water is finite and making dams won’t give you more water. The problem was that a lot of water was wasted and a lot of good agricultural land lost. Let’s efficiently use water’.
Mikhail Gorbachev, at Brisbane Festival’s Earth Dialogues forum for resource management and sustainable development
 
 
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