Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Bill Burrows on the Rockhampton Flood

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SOME of you would have heard of Australian rangeland ecologist, Dr Bill Burrows.  Bill, now retired, lives on the dunes at Emu Park with views of the flood plume flowing north from the Fitzroy River mouth.    According to Bill this has been one of the least dramatic and cleanest floods with only occasional frothing from pollution visible in the Coral Sea and, up to this time, much less debris washing up than even with the much smaller flood in 2006.  

Bill witnessed the 1954 flood (the second highest since Europeans arrived) which was still just receding when a young Queen Elizabeth visited Rockhampton on March 16 that year.   Bill’s father was a station ‘ringer’ during the 1918 flood; known locally as The Great Flood which peaked at 10.03 metres (almost one metre higher than this event).   In the scheme of things, according to Bill, the present case is just another flood and not a particularly severe one relative to 1954 or 1918 – and much cleaner than previous floods, perhaps because of improved land and river bank management.  

[Read more…] about Bill Burrows on the Rockhampton Flood

Rhetoric from Climate Minister Disputed by Anthony Cox

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MINISTER for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet, believes in anthropogenic global warming.  Send him a request asking he justify this belief and the reply is likely to be long and full of appeals to authority: 

“There is clear evidence that our climate is changing, largely due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases.  The Fourth Assessment Report, produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, states that global warming is ‘unequivocal’ and ‘most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th Century is very likely due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations’.

[Read more…] about Rhetoric from Climate Minister Disputed by Anthony Cox

Snowy Hydro – The Business: Part 1, by Max Talbot

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OVER the last few weeks I have posted information suggesting that Snowy Hydro has not managed the vast waters under its control appropriately and in particular that it has failed to store flood waters for subsequence seasons and even exacerbated flooding in the Riverina by making water releases from Lake Eucumbene – the system’s central reservoir. 

Max Talbot was the Executive Officer Strategic Engineering at Snowy Hydro and Operations Engineer Snowy Mountains Council for many years, retiring in 2003.  He has written extensively on the Corporation and recently updated a document ‘Snowy Hydro – The Business’ penned in 2008.   Mr Talbot has generously given permission for me to publish this document as a four part series.  Following is Part 1 – providing an historical perspective.

[Read more…] about Snowy Hydro – The Business: Part 1, by Max Talbot

How much water did Snowy Hydro release from Lake Eucumbene during the floods?

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THE managing director of Snowy Hydro, Terry Charlton, denies that Snowy Hydro contributed to the devastating flooding along the Murrumbidgee in early December in which homes were destroyed and wheat fields drown.  He does, however, admit that until Wednesday, December 8, water was being released from Lake Eucumbene.  

Lake Eucumbene has the capacity to store the equivalent of nine Sydney Harbours and was at only 25 percent capacity. 

A chart, recently provided to me by a Snowy Hydro staff member,  shows the extent to which lake levels were falling early December.  

During just one 24 hour period, between 8th and 9th December, lakes levels fell six centimetres which is equivalent to 6,000 megalitres of water being released. 

That is a lot of water; enough water to provide all of Melbourne’s water needs for one week, or grow 5,000 tonnes of rice.  

And yet according to Mr Charlton no water was released from Lake Eucumbene during that 24 hour period.  

In The Australian newspaper on December 15, journalists Samantha Maiden and Lauren Wilson reported that Federal Water Minister Tony Burke and a spokeswoman for the NSW Office of Water also denied any water was release by Snowy Hydro except from overflowing lower storages because of excessive rainfall and flooding. 

The chart of lake levels and an operational plan for Snowy Hydro for December 9th, also provided to me by a staff member, however, indicate that very significant quantities of water were released from Lake Eucumbene.

The communities of the Riverina deserve to know the truth.  

Snowy Hydro must make public all the documentation that they hold on all water releases, and also all inflows, for Lake Eucumbene for November and December 2010.   Only then will we know the extent to which Snowy Hydro contributed to the flooding – or not.

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Previous posts on this issue can be found by scrolling down here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/tag/snowy-hydro/

The comment thread on this blog post was closed at 12noon on January 05.  There will be more posts on this issue providing opportunity for more comment.