Premier Anna's climate change pillow talk ...
Excerpt from Courier Mail:
Queensland's place in the politics of pollution
4 October 2008
Could you you, in a flight of fancy, imagine the pillow talk that might take place in the bedroom of Greg Withers and his squeeze, Anna Bligh?
Withers, the boss of Queensland's Office of Climate Change, might say: "Tell me what sort of a day you had, darling?"
The Premier replies: "It was very exciting, sweetheart.
"We gave the go-ahead for Australia's largest coal mine at Wandoan."
Withers: "Is that the new Xstrata mine, dear?"
Bligh: "Yes, that's the one. It's a whopper.
"We've declared it a Project of State Significance and we're counting on the royalties to help pay for the new kids' hospital.
"And what did you do today, Greg?"
Withers beams. "We put up a new website at www.climatesmart.qld.gov.au so folks can follow our low carbon diet to reduce their own carbon footprint.
"It's full of handy tips like turning off lights and hanging washing on the line rather than using a dryer.
"Our goal is to have 500,000 Queenslanders reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 2000 kilos a year by 2010.
"By the way, do you know how much carbon dioxide the Wandoan coal will produce, Anna?"
Bligh: "It's lights-out time, Greg."
Withers: "Did you notice our new 17W low-energy bulbs?"
...
We could turn off our lights and hang out our washing for a thousand years and still not compensate for the harmful emissions Queensland pumps into the global atmosphere via its coal exports.
Government leaders such as Bligh and her Sustainability and Climate Change Minister Andrew McNamara are locked in a cynical environmental pantomime designed to hoodwink voters into believing they care about the environment.
...
See - Courier Mail - Queensland's place in the politics of pollution.
posted by Concerned Ratepayer at 7:31 AM
3 Comments:
We in Hervey Bay are very cynical about the state governments capability to manage infrastructure.
If Toowoombas recyled water plant got of the ground and was managed like the Dam Infrastructure in Hervey Bay youll have something to worry about it.
The dam gates in hervey bay failed and Andrew Macnamar our labour mp said he had enough " bottles of wine" with the dam operator to know it was a good project. Go figure, how will that be with recyled sewer water?
This is our story:
The example of the Lenthalls Dam Gate failure in Hervey Bay Queensland is a classic example of the failings of Water Corporations
You would imagine that Dam infrastructure in Australia is safe - however our experience on the Burrum River in QLD shows just how easy it is to become a fatality when Dam Infrastructure fails.
Gates constructed in December 2007 at Lenthalls Dam on the heavily impounded Burrum River failed to lower to release flood water as designed in Febuary 2008.
Wide Bay Water was the constructing authority and responsible for the design and operation of the dam gate infrastructure.
Our upstream farm house, where the tributaries join the dam proper was cut of when flood water continued to back up much higher than the constructing authority Wide Bay Water had predicted the water levels would ever go.
Three family members were stuck at our farm house. The emergency evacuation plan found in the Lenthalls Dam Emergency Action Plan called for evacuation after water levels reached RL26.91 - water levels reached 27.4 at the dam wall flowing over the blocked gates and backed up to RL28.5 at our house. No one evacuated the famuily members stranded in rising water.
No one from the constructing authority Wide Bay Water contacted us to undertake evacuation or explain the risk we faced due to Crest Gate Failure.
We believe the CEO Tim Waldron was overseas at conference when the event happed. Perhaps these details could be confirmed with him by fellow engineers.
The Operations manuals for the dam place responsibilty for dam saftey and evacuation with the CEO as does the emergency action plan.
The CEO has not been called to account for failure to take responsible action to ensure an evacuation would occur in his abscence if required. We were not evacuation as the plan required after the water reached RL26.91
If the rain event in Feb 08 had not stopped the three people cut off at our flood impacted farm house would have been inundated by metres of water.
We heard about the dam failure from other locals close to the dam wall who had heard the gates have failed - we now have full evidence to verify the dam gate failure.
What our situation highlights is that while most fatalities from failed dams and failed dam infrastructure have occurred in the countries of the south ie third world Australi is not immune.
In this instance the managing authority was a Water Corporation.
We were very lucky the rain event that caused the flooding to back up over the failed dam gate, stopped.
Please see the small news article that did report the event
See the article:
Resident fears dam gates risk flooding
Posted Wed May 21, 2008 8:26am AEST
Updated Wed May 21, 2008 8:25am AEST
• Map: Hervey Bay 4655
A land-holder upstream of a major dam south-west of Hervey Bay says multi-million dollar barriers on the storage are broken, putting her family at risk of flooding.
Queensland Deputy Premier Paul Lucas will officially open the $16 million project at Lenthalls Dam, which is designed to more than double the storage’s capacity.
In what is claimed to be an Australian first, the two metre high crest gates sink when the dam reaches capacity to prevent flooding upstream and provide for environmental flows.
But Esther Allan says in February the gates jammed, causing water to back up onto her property.
“This is an extremely expensive piece of infrastructure. Ratepayers paid for this and their expectation would be that it would be operable,” she said.
“If it wasn’t, we need to know why - not only because our family’s safety was put at risk, but because ratepayers expect to get a result from the infrastructure they pay for.”
The local government corporation that runs Lenthalls Dam says the gates do not work, but it was monitoring the rising water.
Wide Bay Water general manager David Wiskar says adjustments were needed during the dam’s commissioning and are continuing.
“The gates were all needing some fine-tuning. At the moment we were able to complete that tuning on three of the gates,” he said.
“There’s two that remain to be done, but we’re waiting until the level in the dam falls to an adequate level to [do] those final two.”
The Lenthalls Dam Gates are still not fully operational today September 2008 and heading into the QLD summer flood season.
We can evidence what we are saying.
We dont have too much faith that any Water Corporation will maintain our saftey - we worry the State Labour government does not understand the level of community concern regarding water infrastructure management.
Until the public can have greater confidence water corporations should not recieve any more state and federal funding or support.
Infrastructure once built needs to be operable ongoing not fail immediately it is installed and require costly ongoing maintence and monitoring programs to keep it oeprable.
If the infrastructure cannot be managed safely now - those who live in areas affected by damming have much to worry about as climate change will increase the risks posed by failed infrastructure.
Good luck with that recycled water
5:19 PM, October 04, 2008
If Toowoomba's recycled water plant had gotten off the ground it would have bankrupted the city. Would those wanting it have cared about the city's finances? Thorley headed off to Tasmania and Flanagan is busy on his own projects.
9:35 PM, October 04, 2008
Sounds scarey, doesn't and they want Qld Health to look after the recycled water
Bligh and her cohorts must be swept from office
6:51 PM, October 05, 2008
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