The Burnett River Dam: the politics of environmental management in Qld

A number of events are taking place in Queensland that are significant for the future of environmental and water management.

Foremost is recent comment by the current Minister of Environment, Dean Wells, stating: "If there's an election undertaking, then that overrides any studies that might be done."

This presumably means no economic or environmental studies were taken into consideration in the approval process for the Burnett River Dam, including the latest report entitled Burnett Region Least Cost Planning Study commissioned by the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency from The Institute of Sustainable Futures.

The second event is the imminent move by the Commonwealth government to accredit the states to assume certain responsibilities under the EPBC Act 1999 through bi-lateral agreements.

The politics of the Burnett River Dam

The Queensland government passed the Water Act 2000 to provide for sustainable water infrastructure development. At the time this was heralded as a major step forward for sustainable management.

During the 1999 state election the Labour Party made an election promise to build a 300,000ML dam on the Burnett River at Paradise, east of Bundaberg. It is widely thought this promise was an attempt to win the marginal state seats of Bundaberg and Burnett - which they did.

Once elected, the state government initiated The Water Infrastructure Planning and Development Implementation Plan. This was to be implemented by the Department of Natural Resources using information provided by the EPA. To advance this planning process, which must comply with the Council of Australian Governments water reform agenda, the Department of Natural Resources developed a Water Allocation and Management Plan (WAMP).

The WAMP - using the integrated quantity quality model (IQQM) flow model subsequently assessed and approved by the Cooperative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology - recommended an environmental flow for the Burnett River of 81 per cent. This determined that further water harvesting of only 62,000ML could be allowed before serious environmental damage would occur.

Upon receiving these recommendations the Queensland government amended the Water Act 2000 by the Water Infrastructure Development (Burnett Basin) Amendment Act 2001.

This over-rode the government's own departmental approval to build the Burnett River Dam, which would allow 196,000ML to be extracted from the river and reduce environmental flows to 72 per cent with a 40 per cent annual recurrence interval (ARI). This refers to small flows which flush out nutrients, weeds and salt and provide habitat requirements for animals and plants. The IQQM recommended that the 1.5 year ARI be set at 74 per cent of natural flow.

The Amendment Water Act 2001 was widely criticised for ignoring the recommendations of the WAMP and for being politically motivated.

During the assessment process for an earlier impoundment on the Burnett River, Walla Weir, the then federal Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, commissioned a report from retired CSIRO chairman, Dr. Boardman.

The Boardman Report recommended long-term studies of the Queensland Lungfish Neoceratodus forsteri and the undescribed freshwater turtle Elseya sp. Boardman recognised not only the significance of these species but also that the cumulative effects of current and future impoundments on the Burnett River were more serious concerns for the survival of these species than the impact of Walla Weir alone.

There are two published papers that I am aware of; Freshwater Turtle Populations (Limpus et al 2002) and Ecology and demography of the Queensland lungfish in the Burnett River (S. Brooks and P. Kind, May 2002).

Limpus et al notes a recruitment problem with Elseya sp. turtles due to the lack of juvenile turtles of this species being captured during the study.

A significant finding of Brookes and Kind was that lungfish are negatively impacted by impoundments as the lungfish require shallow, vegetated water conditions to spawn. These conditions do not occur in impoundments and any further reduction in flow will destroy the areas currently remaining.

Professor Jean Joss of The Australian Lungfish Research Centre says this situation is exacerbated by the fact that lungfish return to the same spawning site year after year and if the site is unsuitable they will not lay eggs. Thus, in an impoundment situation lungfish will not breed again and as they can live to 100 years the problem will go unnoticed until the population is in serious decline, which will be too late.

Following construction of Walla Weir, the Queensland government has begun preconstruction activities for the largest impoundment yet on the Burnett River. The river and its tributaries already have 32 dams and weirs restricting natural flow and the proposed Burnett River dam will potentially impound another 45km of the river's main channel. This will mean that 75 per cent of the lower Burnett will be impounded with flows reduced significantly.

In January 2003 the Threatened Species Scientific Advisory Committee recommended to the Federal Minister of Environment, David Kemp, that the lungfish be listed as a vulnerable threatened species under the EPBC Act 1999 - a listing that takes into account fragmented habitat, small genetic diversity and degraded spawning sites.

The document commissioned by the Qld EPA has been made cabinet-in-confidence by the state government. This means it is not accessible to the public under Freedom of Information law in Queensland.

Recent media reports quote from this document to the effect that it offers similar water infrastructure benefits to those claimed for the dam by using existing impoundments and improved water management techniques. This led to the Queensland Environment Minister, Dean Wells, stating in public that subsequent economic or environmental reports regarding a particular infrastructure project are only useful for future projects "because an election promise overrides all other considerations".

This is a disastrous situation. No research, no matter how significant, is to be considered once an election promise is made, even if it has been established that a project will have serious negative environmental impacts and an alternative solution has been identified!

The Burnett River Dam is of special concern as it involves the destruction of lungfish spawning habitat and the possible extinction of a direct surviving link between water and land animals that has existed unchanged for 100 million years.

This is an issue of international significance.

State-federal agreements

The stated purpose of Bi-lateral Agreements - as specified in the EPBC Act 1999 - is to remove duplication of environmental assessment by federal and state departments. To achieve this, the Federal government will accredit the state government to undertake certain assessments that are the responsibility of the federal government under the EPBC Act 1999.

The concern for environmental management is the level of supervision that federal government will have over the actions of the State governments. This concern was brought to the fore this week by the Federal Minister of Environment's decision to list the lungfish as vulnerable. In his statement Mr. Kemp said he was in no doubt the Queensland government has done everything that is necessary to ensure all environmental obligations have been met, including those about the lungfish.

It would appear that Mr. Kemp could not have taken the remotest effort to ensure the Queensland government has complied with its obligations, or that it intends to.

Queensland's Environment Minister has admitted that there is a more sustainable development option for water infrastructure in the Burnett but that any evidence showing environmental degradation will not be considered "due to the project being an election promise".

The second and more poignant point is that the Queensland Department of State Development has precedence over all other departments once a project costs more than $10 million. This explains why the recommendations against the dam by EPA, DNR and DPI were ignored by the government and the DSD-established Burnett Water Pty Ltd in order to fast-track the EIS and gain all necessary licenses for the project.

This means that the management of the Queensland lungfish is not currently under any state or federal environmental control. The Department of State Development has complete control of management of this internationally significant animal although the DSD has no expertise in environmental matters and is inspired by purely electoral motivations.

Burnett Water Pty Ltd, the government company established to fast-track the dam to meet the election promise, has Tom Barton, the Minister of State Development, as its single shareholder and is co-chaired by Rowena McNally, Chair of the Sugar Industry Authority.

The company chosen to undertake the EIS was Sinclair Knight Merz, which had previously been contracted by the Burnett Water Development Group; an industry lobby group widely perceived to be established to discredit the WAMP.

The EIS reads like a prospectus for the dam project, uses incorrect data and is very selective of the Brooks and Kind report. It does not mention spawning.

This significant project was approved by Federal Minister Kemp in January 2002. Mr. Kemp did not consider the lungfish in his approval. Nor did he consider water quality issues for The Great Barrier Reef. Subsequent analysis by the Reef Risk workshop in 2003 recognised the Burnett River as a high risk to the reef due both to catchment quality and high risk from further developments. It was Mr. Kemp's responsibility under the EPBC Act to consider both these issues.

Environment Australia, responding to questions about Mr. Kemp's behaviour in this issue, says their advice from the Australian Government Solicitor is that Mr. Kemp did not have to consider the lungfish because it was not a listed species at the time.

However, in the EPBC Act Part 9, Division 1, Subdivision B 136 Subsection 1 (b) economic and social matters, 2 (a) principles of ecologically sustainable development, 2(c) the EIS of the proponent and 2(e) any other information relevant offer a somewhat different conclusion.

Clearly the Minister had not critically considered the EIS of the proponent as it would have been obvious that the process was flawed.

Clearly the Minister had not considered principles of ecologically sustainable development as adherence to these principles has been denied by the Queensland Minister of Environment, Dean Wells.

And clearly the Minister did not consider any other information relevant because the information regarding the ecology of the lungfish was available and this identified that a dam would impact negatively upon the species. At the time the lungfish was, in fact, being considered for listing as a threatened species by his own department.

It is in this manner that significant environmental and water management is being conducted in Queensland. The process is devoid of any assessment or regulation by departments with the expertise to do so and there appears to be absolutely no audit process from the federal government to ensure the state adheres to its obligations.