Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

FLOODS: WATER STORAGE MONITORING
1650 COUNCIL Wednesday, 1 June 2011
There would still have been a large flood, but it would
not have been the record-breaking flood if, over the
space of a few weeks, water could have been released
from the dam. That lead to calls not only for the
lowering but also the changing of the operating rules
for Lake Eppalock.
At first Goulburn-Murray Water stated it was awaiting
the outcome of the Comrie review, but when the
Comrie review indicated it would not be doing specific
work in that area, although it would consult some
independent hydrologists, we later heard the local
member in the Assembly, Paul Weller, calling for some
work in this area. That was followed by Peter Walsh
making some sort of announcement that
Goulburn-Murray Water would conduct a review. An
ABC report of 9 February quotes Mr Walsh as saying:
As a result of the constant rain events … Goulburn-Murray
Water will be looking at the operating rules, just to ensure
they are still appropriate …
I have had a great deal of difficulty gaining from
Goulburn-Murray Water any understanding of how this
review is progressing or what it will consist of.
Naturally irrigators and other owners of water will
argue, ‘That is our water’, but the degree of impact of a
lower operating level depends a bit on the type of
events we are talking about. If a small proportion of
excess flows were being released in only those most
extreme years and only in the most extreme
circumstances, then we might not really be losing very
much water at all. The cost benefit of that, vis-a-vis the
flooding of Rochester and downstream communities
every 10 years or so, as a more cautious approach might
prove to be preferable to how it is being operated at the
moment, which is for the greatest possible storage of
irrigators’ water and to a certain extent of water that is
allocated to Bendigo.
In any case the minister has recognised the need for a
review of that storage, but storages right around the
state are quite full as I speak. Of the Yarra storages,
only the Thomson is about half full; most of the others
are close to 100 per cent full. The Upper Yarra is at
60 per cent, Sugarloaf is at 95 per cent, Silvan is at
86 per cent, Tarago is at 66 per cent, Yan Yean is at
89 per cent, Greenvale is at 76 per cent and Maroondah
and O’Shannassy are at 100 per cent. I am not
suggesting that it is the Yarra catchment that is at most
risk of severe flooding; I am simply trying to create a
complete picture.
The information from the Southern Rural Water area
last week as storages were still rising was: Glenmaggie
at 81 per cent, Blue Rock at 97 per cent, Melton full,
Merrimu full, Narracan full, Pykes Creek full and
Rosslynne full. In the Goulburn-Murray Water area the
figures were: Dartmouth at 63 per cent, Hume at 93 per
cent, Yarrawonga Weir at 53 per cent and Torrumbarry
at 92 per cent. The group around Kerang were at
between 60 and 95 per cent capacity: Lake Buffalo was
at 50 per cent, Lake William Hovell at 100 per cent,
Nillahcootie at 99 per cent, Eildon itself at 84 per cent,
Goulburn Weir at 100 per cent, Waranga at 80 per cent,
Greens Lake at 70 per cent, Eppalock at 97.2 per cent,
Cairn Curran at 89 per cent and Tullaroop at 99 per
cent. Laanecoorie — there are big problems down there
because the gates are broken — is down to 36 per cent,
and Newlyn and Hepburn are both over 100 per cent.
Collectively those are our major storages on regulated
rivers, and I am asking for a review. I am not specifying
how big that review should be or what form it should
take; I am simply asking someone in the area of
responsibility as a matter of risk management to look at
what changes to operating rules might be contemplated
that would minimise the chance of further flooding
when those dams go to full and over-full.
It is a touchstone issue for the coalition, I know.
Building more dams is one of those trendy right-wing
issues they like to sit around and talk about over a latte,
but they have got no real intention of pushing it forward
in any serious way. It is more of a culture war for them.
In relation to where we can build more dams I noticed
that federal coalition members Greg Hunt and Andrew
Robb are conducting an entire review on behalf of
Tony Abbott. Again, opportunistically after the disaster
in Queensland they announced that they want to have a
review of where we should build more dams for flood
mitigation.
There is a whole pile of them here in Victoria, and if the
operating rules for them do not in any way account for
flood mitigation, especially at the extreme end of the
weather events, then that is a good place for them to
start. But if the government is at all serious about
building new dams, it should check out a report that is
in the parliamentary library that was put together by the
former Rural Water Commission back in the 1980s, I
think. The commission looked at virtually every
possible site for a dam in Victoria. I do not think there
were too many that it left out. You would need to
convert from acre-feet to megalitres and perhaps put on
an inflation factor, but I bet you those guys knew
something about the cost of dam building, because they
had actually built some — not like the Carlton branch
of the Liberal Party or whoever it is that keeps moving
these motions saying we should have more dams in
theory, revved up by having read an Andrew Bolte
article once.