Tuesday 11 January 2011

Dams and floods

The Shadowlands starts a debate on how useful dams might have been in Queensland.

As Gavin notes, Peter Garrett knocked back a Queensland dam because it might have impacted on the habitat of some endangered frogs and things.

I'm wondering this - how would the impact of the dam compare to the impact of a fucking enormous flood? Do those habitats still exist, or are they now 30 feet under water? What sort of condition will those habitats be in when the waters subside, and will those endangered species ever come back? What if they've all been wiped out by the flood? Can we then start pouring concrete for a new dam?

Of course Garrett and the Federal environmental pubes would never consider such an outcome, as they couldn't conceive of it ever raining again in Australia thanks to climate change.

Idiots.

5 comments:

Pedro the Ignorant said...

Not just "idiots", BOAB.

Fucking idiots.

I've been on this Earth a few decades and seen some empty headed fools in my time, but some of these clowns allegedly running the country take the cake.

kae said...

Lungfish.

Bloody lungfish.

They live in and out of the water, they walk around for heaven's sake.

They ditched the dam for lungfish.

I subscribe to Weatherzone Weather Widget, do you have any idea how often there's a flood warning for the Mary River?

(About once an hour!)

cav said...

Some common sense will come out of this.

The experts know nuthin'

Dams will now be built and flood mitigation projects will be started.

The end of global warming bullshit?

Well until the next generation stumble across the next big thing that will kill us all unless we change our ways.

Anonymous said...

Without being able to recall the actual facts, my recollection of the whole Traveston Dam saga is it was perpetuated by Peter Beattie and appeared from the outside to be mismanaged from the get go.

My faulty memory suggests the actual site was not ideal and while eventually Garrett did knock it on the head for environmental reasons, it should never have been allowed to get that far in the first place.

I am happy to be corrected and while it is cold comfort for those who have suffered in the past little while, in general, the community may have been better off without it?

Having said that, I am all for the building of dams and the harvesting of water for both agricultural and community use. Just make sure it is in the right place and is not held to unrealistic environmental demands.

1735099 said...

Building dams is one thing - managing their outflows is another. I'm glad I'm not having to make decisions about releases at Wivenhoe now. Damned if they do - damned if they don't (excuse the pun).