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The Forum > Article Comments > Large balls > Comments

Large balls : Comments

By Roger Pielke, published 20/1/2011

After years of drought it would have been easy to see Wivenhoe dam not as a risk of flooding but as a buffer to risk of drought.

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My house was directly impacted so I am perhaps a little more jaundiced in my view than others. But I cannot help wondering why it would take "large balls" to make a management decision to release water on a flatter curve for longer rather than leave it to the last minute and have to take such drastic (and damaging) measures. Risk management is central to the answer. We now know what the risk of waiting looks like, we also have (is it?) 2 functional but mothballed Desal plants waiting for the next drought. I hope next time we have a more measured risk management assessment to rely on.
Posted by bitey, Thursday, 20 January 2011 9:38:44 AM
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Well, very interesting.

If this is correct, & it is now the second source of similar information, the insurance industry is off the hook.

If these blokes did take the weekend off, in a growing emergency, they, & us as tax payers, should be for the high jump.

If we, through our state government & our bureaucrats, caused this flood, it should be at our cost that all damage is repaired.

I wonder how much of the Ipswich flood, from the Bremer R was caused by back up from the Brisbane R.

We could be paying for this for a long time.

It does appear to be a continuing story. Every time there is a major disaster it is made worse by our bureaucrats, rather than managed. The Victorian, & Canberra fires come to mind.

The buck goes to George Street, & the politicians, but continues to us, & we must be prepared to pick up the cost.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 20 January 2011 10:57:26 AM
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Dam operators will never in a million years get the procedure right, They will be bagged for wasting water, or they will be bagged for causing a flood.
The release of water should have been three days before it started raining. It is a no win situation.
The rain area was far to big for concentrated mitigation.
Posted by 579, Thursday, 20 January 2011 3:16:32 PM
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I have some sympathy with that problem 570.

A friend of mine used to tell me that to promote improved pasture, you should get every thing ready, then broadcast the seed a couple of days before rain. He never did tell me when that was.

However, if they did allow the dams flood compartment to fill to a considerable extent over the weekend, with heavy rain forecast, because those responsible for ordering greater releases were off for the weekend, there is absolutely no excuse.

If, as with climate gate, & Queensland health, this inquiry is designed to be a whitewash, there may be another flood, this one of indignation.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 20 January 2011 3:45:31 PM
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You had me going there for a minute, Hasbeen:

"If these blokes did take the weekend off,
in a growing emergency, they, & us as tax
payers, should be for the high jump. "

Shocked as I was to learn that more than 80% of the water in the Brisbane River at its peak on Wednesday resulted from a 645,000 megalitre release from Wivenhoe on the Tuesday, I didn't think I could have missed anything about the operators 'taking the weekend off'. I re-read the article. It stated, in the second paragraph of a quote of Andrew Dragun, an adjunct professor in economics at the Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University and editor of the International Journal of Water:

"As the low system dumped rain, the operator
opened the gates, releasing about 116,000
megalitres on Friday-Saturday, with releases
of 100,000ML over the next two days. Despite
these releases the dam level rose to 148 per cent
by Monday last week."

There is thus not the slightest suggestion of those responsible for operating the dam 'taking the weekend off in a growing emergency'. Professor Dragun expressly contradicts this possibility with his reporting of the 116,000 megalitre release on Friday-Saturday, and the 100,000 megalitre release over the Sunday and Monday, thus showing the operators as having been right on the job before, during, and after the weekend. Nowhere in the article can I see any suggestion as to there having been a requirement upon the dam operators to seek any 'higher authorization' for greater releases on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday than the ones that were made. There may have been such requirement, but one would need a reference before being able to claim so.

The main thrust of the article is that the operators certainly operated 'by the book', but that the decision-making climate in which 'the book' was written failed to take into account well known effects of the El Nino Southern Oscillation on rainfall in Australia generally, and SEQ in particular, in a manner described as being one of wilful ignorance.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Thursday, 20 January 2011 8:24:23 PM
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Hi Roger and fellow commentators,

Like Rogers psych analysis a lot.

Would be interested in your further analysis in the setting that the dam is back to 100%, and lots more rain/cyclones possible flooding ahead. What pressures on operators now? ... they have "hindsight" and everyone is watching.

The problem is not over by a long shot.

Best
Andrew Dragun
Posted by AKD, Friday, 21 January 2011 11:49:57 AM
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To take action on releases of water In Dams their is a need to anticipate other climatic factors such as the El Nino and La Nina events which starts off South America and take a few days to hit Queensland. More water could have been released earlier and it was not.

The Wivenhoe dam was built after the 1974 disaster. It was designed for fresh water supplies and 70% bigger so as to release water in a flood. Dam management needs a hot line connected to a CSIRO researcher responsible for early warning of when to pull the plug. CSIRO researchers are trained to can anticipate climatic factors such as the El Nino and La Nina events. After all they predicted the current flood years ago
Posted by PEST, Friday, 21 January 2011 4:48:34 PM
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Congratulations are due to whoever found what is now this OLO article, or to whoever, already knowing of its existence and understanding its true significance, made sure that OLO became aware of it.

Roger Pielke makes the concluding observation that:

"While the Queensland flood inquiry will
focus on hydrology and the dam's management,
there will be deeper issues here of decision
making under uncertainty and ignorance, and
how such decisions should be made in the future."

As I understand it, Wivenhoe Dam is managed by a Queensland government corporation, Sun Water. The institution of such corporations seems usually to be undertaken as an intermediate step prior to full privatisation of an erstwhile public utility. The article has noted the inherent conflict between the commercial and public utility interest entailed in maximising water storage in the dam, and maintaining empty space within the structure to hold back what would otherwise be floodwaters during high rainfall events.

I think it is generally accepted that such instruments of government as the Police Force, Armed Services, State Emergency Services, and the like that deal with public safety, are not appropriate entities to ever be 'privatized'. Given the role in flood mitigation that the Wivenhoe Dam was always intended to play, I ask the question as to how is flood mitigation 'privatized'? Flood mitigation is a public safety issue.

So is there not only the issues of decision making under uncertainty and ignorance involved, but an issue as to the very propriety of a government corporate structure for an instrumentality responsible for aspects of public safety? Where public safety is involved, the buck should always stop with the appropriate Minister, should it not?

With respect to the management of Wivenhoe Dam, has the responsibility of government been abdicated in assigning to a government corporation a role that is necessarily one involving conflict of interest between commercial results and public safety?

The article notes a trade off between risks of drought with risks of floods. To what extent did the cancellation of the construction of the Wolfdene Dam in 1990 intensify this conflict of interest?
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Saturday, 22 January 2011 9:12:24 AM
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To my question as to why Governments still lay out millions of tax dollars to frequently inundated islands when rising sea levels are predicted by experts & people who know, one of the bureaucrats in charge replied "it won't happen before I retire in three years".
That particular LG bureaucrat is part of the large group of public servants whose planning ahead goes as far as the time of their collecting taxpayer funded Superannuation. I suspect the planners of Brisbane after the 74 flood were of similar stock.
Posted by individual, Saturday, 22 January 2011 10:34:51 AM
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Forrest Gumpp notes a trade off between risks of drought with risks of floods. To what extent did the cancellation of the construction of the Wolfdene Dam in 1990 intensify this conflict of interest?

Answer. If the Wolfdene Dam had been built in the 1990s it would have increased potential for more water release prior to the flood. I repeat their is a need to anticipate other climatic factors such as the El Nino and La Nina events which starts off South America and take a few days or weeks to hit Queensland. And far more More water could have been released earlier and it was not.

Understand this: CSIRO researchers are trained to anticipate these climatic factors and are able to give warning of when to pull the plug. After all they predicted the current flood years ago and knew the Wolfdene and Wivenhoe dams where both needed. This is the risk management issue that needs addressed by the Inquiry.
Posted by PEST, Monday, 24 January 2011 7:51:42 PM
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