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Ian Mackay [1] has just returned from visiting south east Queensland’s many water storages. He clocked up 1,800 kilometres over the four days and this is what he found:

1. In pictures: http://www.stoppress.com.au/ .

2. In words:

“Dam after dam, dams well away from areas of population pressure, were well below critical level. Several were even at zero.

It was seeing the two and a half metre tree growing just a little above the waterline at Moogerah Dam, though, that really drove it home.

Plainly the dam hadn’t been filled beyond this level for years.

Dates scrawled at the side of the spillway wall, indicating when the dam had overflowed only confirmed it. There was the mark for the memorable Australia Day floods of 1974, but nothing after 1976. The towering, impressively curved dam wall, tightly wedged between two massive hills, had been touted as something of an engineering feat when completed in the early sixties.

Despite all the hopes behind its construction, it was clear that it had been holding back a dwindling water reserve for years.

Moogerah Dam — the name means either “place of storms” or “meeting place of storms” depending who you ask — is currently holding only 7% of its capacity.

The water ski cottages hugging what was once its shore line and the twice-extended boat ramp tell the tale of a water level that has receded over a much longer time period than just the last few years.

One friend tells me of watching enormous eels thunder over the spillway back in the early seventies. Another speaks wistfully of water skiing over the top of what is now a great isthmus jutting into the dwindling pond. Tall grass now covers the spillway area and fishermen drive the considerable length of the isthmus to cast a line. Pelicans, stilts and cormorants share the receding shoreline with grazing cattle in scenes that wouldn’t be out of place around a drying billabong much further inland.

But Moogerah is far from alone.

Most of the Sunwater storages throughout the southeast are well under a third full [2].

Nearby Maroon Dam, which also drains the impressive towering peaks of the Border Ranges stands at 21%; Bjelke-Petersen Dam collecting water from a wide catchment in the South Burnett, including the Bunya Mountains holds just 3% of its 125 000 megalitre capacity.

Atkinson Dam, near Lowood is at 0%; its picnic grounds understandably deserted, its remaining water puddle far off in the distance behind the water skiing signs.

All these dams share a common thread of optimism, the hope that the provision of a dependable water supply would somehow “drought-proof” the state and facilitate enhanced agriculture and easier living. To many who share this dream that dams equate to a certainty of water supply, the present crisis is wholly attributable to our not having added to our portfolio of existing dams.

Now, four decades on, it might be as well to reflect on the reality.

South East Queensland gets nightly updates of the levels of the major domestic storages. Somerset, Wivenhoe and North Pine Dams are collectively at around 29%. These figures look almost respectable compared to those previously mentioned, but anxiety about their low levels has lead to severe restrictions.

Property owners on the shores of Somerset Dam speak of having to regularly extend their fences out into what had been dam, of their cattle now grazing on land recently exposed and now covered in grass.

The simple fact is that our dams are failing us.

It’s not the engineers’ fault. They built dams that held back water when it rained, but there’s that other variable that is well out of the control of every engineer, and also, as he has repeatedly rued, our Premier.

“I can’t make it rain,” says Peter Beattie.

What he could do, though, is recognize that our water crisis comes from an almost total reliance on dams for water supply. Dams in the area of greatest population growth aren’t in fact the lowest. Changing rainfall patterns mean that Moogerah is getting fewer of the storms that gave it both its name and its desirability as a dam-site.

Instead, his assessment of the situation is that if our existing dams aren’t holding enough water, then plainly we need more of them……… if your wallet doesn’t contain much money, then obviously you need more wallets.

His newly announced additions include a mega-dam at Traveston across the Mary River, a smaller dam at Wyaralong across Teviot Brook near Boonah and raising of both Borumba and Hinze dams and a few other storages as well.

It’s an assessment he hopes will be shared by voters, at least those who still share that axiomatic “dam equals more water” connection. Many though, are questioning how dams that can’t possibly begin to fill until at least 2011 will be any use at all in a crisis that could well crunch in just two years time if significant rains don’t fall.

The Beattie government’s newest, the Paradise Dam that drowns the Burnett River, northwest of Childers, was recently named in an international list of failed dams. It was hoped that after the wall was completed last year, the dam would fill quickly but it is currently at only 15%. It is an expensive fulfillment (no pun intended) of an electoral promise for which we’ll still be paying years hence.

You can understand why there’s far more outcry about the Mary and Wyaralong Dams than from just those who stand to be displaced. Councils the length of the Mary have spoken out in opposition, and rural groups, environmentalists and church groups have added a long list of concerns.

Many are comparing Premier Beattie’s approach and vision to that of Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

Making the long walk, down through the cracked mud toward the receding shoreline of Bjelke-Petersen Dam, you can almost feel the vision splendid evaporating as surely as the dam’s contents.

While many farmers we encountered were making the most of the opportunity to excavate and deepen their dams in anticipation of eventual rain, no such activity was taking place in the bigger dams. It seemed it was simply easier to just build a new one.

At a time when most water authorities are diversifying their supply options, shouldn’t a first priority be reflecting on the success of the status quo?

The red dots tell the story.

Without good run-off rain, a dam is just an expensive wall.

It’s time we faced the fact that our dams aren’t working.“

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[1] Ian Mackay is a teacher, poet and environmentalist from the Mary Valley. For the last ten years he has been President of the Conondale Range Committee, one of the Sunshine Coast’s longest serving environment groups.

[2] Sunwater information comes from www.sunwater.com.au click on lower left hand information option.