The officially declared failure of the Paradise Dam, now said to require a total rebuild, may be just the beginning of water wars expected to spread, as coastal and near coastal regions confront the limits of growth.
This coincides with state government moves to take Gympie and South Burnett water for the burgeoning South East and follows suggestions that Fraser Coast region may also need more water.
The Bundaberg district dam, now operating at less than half its rated capacity, has been subject to questions about whether, even when full, it will be adequate for projected industry and population growth in its immediate service area.
It all spells potential water resource trouble not just for Bundaberg and North Burnett regions in the near term, but ultimately for urban and irrigation water consumers, possibly from Gympie to Rockhampton and beyond.
The state government’s stated commitment to inter-basin water transfers, starting with taking Mary River and South Burnett water to the South East, coincides with projected agricultural and urban consumption growth elsewhere, combined with limited regional water resources to the north, creating potential for cascading water shortage concerns.
The Paradise Dam has already been suggested as a water source for downstream Mary River irrigators as Gympie and Maryborough and Sunshine Coast demand takes more water out of the Mary system.
That suggestion has angered the dam’s existing Bundaberg and North Burnett customers, including farmers who say they do not have enough water as it is, even without planned industry and population growth planned locally.
The logical expectation is that we will need more storage, including off-river and dam impoundments, on the Mary River and potentially in Bundaberg region, where the Burnett River system is already one of our .most heavily impounded catchments.
Ultimately that would mean increased pressure for more inter-basin transfers from the north.
This would likely require further inter-basin transfers, probably from Rockhampton’s Fitzroy Basin, which itself may then need help from Mackay’s Pioneer River – with the ultimate possibility of a major water grid piping water when needed from as far as Far North Queensland.
The recently released Wide Bay Burnett Regional Plan reveals persistent government intentions to start such a process with greatly increased transfers from Gympie and South Burnett, where councils have been instructed to co-operate with plans to provide cost effective water for increased demand in the South East, despite the apparently unrecognised limits on Gympie region bulk water resources.
All this is starting to happen at a time when it is still unknown when rebuilding of the Paradise Dam will allow it to fill to rated capacity once more.
Meanwhile, a war of words has erupted between current Water Minister Glenn Butcher and former Premier Peter Beattie about who is to blame for the inadequate state of the Paradise Dam, an issue which became a significant part of the Gympie region’s successful campaign against the Beattie Government’s other dam proposal, at Traveston Crossing, upstream from Gympie and also part of a plan to provide water for South East Queensland.
