World at Polarity: July 2018

PARADISE DAM - Case for indictment of Ecocide

A few points to consider (details below)

“We are monitoring it and seeing that it is a complete disaster ecologically … like you could have dropped a nuclear bomb on the river at that point and you would have had pretty much the same impact as this dam ecologically.” Dr Chris McGrath, Qld Barrister practicing in Environmental Law

THE Paradise Dam has become a $240 million killing machine for hundreds of fish, including the threatened lungfish. “It’s complete carnage…” sweetwaterfishing.com

“I have a choice to protect our Earth or to let it be destroyed. For me it is unconscionable to walk away.” Polly Higgins

--------------------o0o------------------------

> “So between 2001 and 2003 this dam got all its approvals… full EIS, modern laws, everything we’ve got now we had then and to me that’s one of the most concerning things. This dam was not approved back in the 1950’s when we didn’t know any better…WE KNEW.” (And even now, knowing just how ecologically and culturally catastrophic the Paradise Dam has been, knowing that it is injuring and killing thousands of the river’s creatures every time it floods, government ministers are STILL proposing multiple mega dams for the last wild rivers in the North of Australia, and currently wanting to raise the Warragamba Dam that will inundate 4,700 hectares of the Blue Mountains World Heritage National Park, destroying 48 threatened plant and animal species habitat and 65 kms of wild rivers. [“Dam plan is hitting a wall”, Daily Telegraph on the Save the Blue Mountains Wild Rivers Facebook page.]

> “Evidence of large numbers of fish injuries and death on the stepped spillway at Paradise Dam.” DEEDI report on Paradise Dam DSFW Monitoring Program 2012) “…it was an amazing report because it was pretty clear that the fisheries guys had just had enough – this report was just absolutely castigating of the operation of the dam in terms of what it was doing to fish.”

Wikipedia “Queensland Lungfish” in particular ‘conservation status’ – listed as vulnerable, and “capture in the wild is strictly prohibited” …yet HUNDREDS of them have already been smashed to death over the North Pine and Paradise dams, a mass mortality that will continue to happen with every flood until they are extinct…this is intentional ecocide.

“In 2009, 80 lungfish died when Seqwater opened the gates at North Pine Dam.”

“THE Paradise Dam has become a $240 million killing machine for hundreds of fish, including the threatened lungfish. The fishways which were an important condition of the dam being built in 2005 do not work and the dam's stepped spillway is a death trap.”

> Not only has this dam never been challenged (although the Qld EDO initially took on the case but dropped it soon after, finding that “there were no further avenues to pursue”) the litigation brought by a very small conservation group challenging just one condition of the dam, which was that “Burnett Water Pty Ltd must install a fish transfer device suitable for the lungfish” resulted in the judge inexplicably finding that the fish transfer device WAS suitable for lungfish, despite overwhelming evidence that it certainly was not – it hadn’t worked for virtually all the time it had been installed and even then not one lungfish had ever used it – the judge then bankrupted this small environmental group charging them court fees of $3 million. (possible appeal even now? negligence charge for judge?)

> Both Qld State and Federal Government ministers should be charged with Criminal Negligence for the way they lied and misled the MP’s to get them to approve this dam – details below

> I do not think the Traditional Owners of that country were ever consulted at any time by the government! (Research Wakka Wakka Jinda) There was just one study conducted by The Burnett Water for All (comprising all the councils of the South Burnett, the Indigenous Traditional Owners of the river, and numerous other concerned groups) where the senior lawpeople gave evidence of numerous sacred sites along the river. (details below) They should have at least been informed that they could have made a declaration under Section 10 and 12 of the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act to protect that stretch of river and all those identified sites along it that were inundated.

> I believe the only creek in the National Park, Bowden Creek, was illegally inundated as it was not removed from the National Park status.

> I believe the Gondwana riverine ecosystem that evolved with the lungfish and turtle (also found in the upper reaches of the Mary River although only a very small remnant) was unique on the planet, therefore it should be listed as critically endangered. Will research asap. Yet to find a biodiversity count made before the river and gorge was drowned…I suspect they didn’t bother.

> Evidence that the large grove of Zamia palms that the logging teams discovered on the lower banks of the Burnett River upstream of the Paradise Dam as they were removing all the useful ‘timber’ before inundation, contained specimens many thousands of years old. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/136323896/16091594 This hidden grove was exceptionally rare, in fact probably the only one of its kind left in the world. It would have been a mecca for ecotourism, along with the lungfish and bottom-breathing turtle. The older trees were all dug up and translocated ‘somewhere’. Burnett Water refused to give any details, citing that if people knew where they were relocated to, they could be stolen. I believe they are all dead, if they bothered to move them at all. This can be easily verified. Burnett Water must provide evidence that these trees were successfully translocated.

“Professor Chamberlain stated that the largest seed cone known to the University of Chicago at that date, weighed thirty-five pounds, whereas, a cone which was taken from a Tambourine Mountain palm weighed eight-five pounds. It was sent to America. Every seed, or nut, in it germinated, and now a tiny macrozamia palm, a descendant from the Tambourine Mountain giant, graces each of the 151 National Parks in America/…/The whole grove of them were more than twenty feet high. The one and only giant now said to be remaining is twenty feet high, and will be a lonely figure for many thousands of years, as the grove of infants near it are now only about three feet high, and each one is said to be three thousand years old. This goes to show how extremely slow these Macrozamia's grow.”

> “Labor won the election and it then became an election commitment, so Beattie was committed to delivering it before there had been any EIS or anything done, so it was a political commitment. Actually the department at the time was saying, we don’t actually need it, there’s enough water impounded already in this river system, but it was a political imperative.”

> “All the State government departments which developed the Water Allocation Management Plan said the dam was not an economic or environmentally sensible option, yet Beattie said he would build one to win the last election, and that's that. All the departments, the staff who worked for years on the plan and the millions of dollars it cost, have been tossed out the window. Beattie has admitted privately that it is wrong, and simply a political issue and Tom Barton the Minister of State Development is a dam evangelist - he is the single shareholder in Burnett Water, the company formed to arrange a dodgy EIS and gain all approvals.” Graeme Armstrong, Biologist and expert on the Burnett River’s ecology

> Peter Beattie abused his position when he made a critical report, that he himself had commissioned, a cabinet document to hide the fact that this dam was going to be a complete disaster. He had been hell bent on building this Dam after an election promise that he stated “overrides all other considerations”, willfully ignoring all the Environmental groups, the CSIRO and lungfish experts from all over the world, including Australia’s foremost expert, Professor Jean Joss and despite commissioning a report that told him exactly what the experts were telling him (including Sir David Attenborough) …that damming this river at this site would be an unthinkable ecological catastrophe that could well lead to the lungfish and the turtle’s extinction on the river. He immediately made that report a ‘Cabinet Document’ so no-one would be able to view it for 30 years, and with the blessings of the federal government, went ahead with the worst case of ecocide in Australia’s history, for which he will hopefully one day face an international criminal court. Since the super-dam was built, there have been three mass mortality events of lungfish and turtles. Lungfish & turtle numbers have crashed and there has been no new recruitment.

> Reportedly the dense fig banks were the last home of the critically endangered Coxens Double-eyed Fig Parrot, sighted there not long before the dam was built…the dam destroyed their habitat:

Rare Parrot at Dam Site – Central Northern Burnett Times

A reported sighting of a bird which could be a Coxen's Double-Eyed Fig Parrot in vine scrub on the Burnett River near Mt. Blandy is a "significant issue" if it can be verified, because of the threat from the proposed Burnett River Dam. The bird is listed as "endangered with a very high risk of extinction", which triggers the recovery objectives of the Action Plan for Australian Birds 200, which involves "locating, protecting and maintaining remaining populations" and "increasing extent, quality and connectivity of habitat", all of which will be further destroyed by the dam.

(Additionally, there is a display of this bird in the Brisbane Museum as critically endangered…its Recovery Plan has been totally ignored)

(NB The Paradise Parrot, the endemic species which once thrived here, and who gave its name to the old goldmining town on the banks where the dam was built, is also thought to be extinct.)

> The recovery plan for the unique white-throated snapping turtle Elseya Albagula, only identified after the dam was commenced, lasted just 2 years before being abandoned

> Water release data examined by Chris McGrath demonstrates that the dam is totally unnecessary as it has not released any water through dry periods.

> The impoundment destroyed the archaeological site of the township of Paradise, another tourist attraction: http://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/order-paradise-colonial-gold-field

Order in Paradise: a colonial gold field | Queensland ...

www.qhatlas.com.au

The gold mining town of Paradise once stretched for more than a kilometre along the southern bank of the Burnett River in Central Queensland. Founded in 1889 and...

> There was enormous potential for eco-cultural tourism along this river, especially day and night canoeing trips through the gorge and indigenous ranger tours. (details below)

> Palaeontologist and evolutionary developmental biologist, Professor Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, Sweden, is coordinating the international response (to oppose the dam? confirm). “The Australian Lungfish is irreplaceable, and the international community is appalled and dismayed that a wealthy and conservation-aware country such as Australia could be prepared to, in effect, deliberately drive such a scientifically important animal to extinction,” he says. “There is a whole slew of important developmental genetics and morphological evolutionary biology questions relating to our anatomy – such as the origin of digits – that can only be answered with reference to the Australian Lungfish. If it dies out, these questions will remain unanswered forever.” Australia’s leading lungfish specialist, Prof Jean Joss who vehemently fought against this dam, has many times made that very same argument. When she and biologist Graeme Armstrong saw the plans for the fish transfer device on the dam, they thought it a ridiculous joke. She asked, even if it does work, what was the point when their entire habitat has been destroyed.

Email: Per.Ahlberg@ebu.uu.se ph: +4618-471 2641

Evolutionsbiologiskt centrum EBC Norbyv.18A

> I will contact Polly Higgins, Ecocide Law Expert in Stroud, and ask if she would consider the merits of this case.

Q&A pages on ecocide law at: eradicatingecocide.com and missionlifeforce.org (interview below)

----------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc0uwJihD8w

Water management lecture 2015

Chris McGrath

Published on Nov 5, 2015

This lecture examines water management, fisheries and cultural heritage laws in Queensland, Australia. A central theme developed in the lecture is that environmental regulation is very hard for long-term and highly complex environmental problems. A large part of the lecture is devoted to examining a case study of the Paradise Dam, which was built on the Burnett River in Queensland in 2003-2005. http://envlaw.com.au/paradise-dam-case/

This case study involved an application by the Wide Bay Burnett Conservation Council (WBBCC) for a declaration and an injunction to restrain an alleged contravention of an approval under the EPBC Act for the Paradise Dam.

The Paradise Dam (previously called the “Burnett River Dam”) is a major dam with a storage capacity of 300,000 megalitres constructed on the lower Burnett River approximately 80 km southwest of Bundaberg in Queensland.

The respondent to the litigation was Burnett Water Pty Ltd, which owned and operated the dam.

The Burnett River contains one of only two known endemic populations of the Australian or Queensland lungfish, a species that is well over 100 million years old, and listed as vulnerable to extinction under the EPBC Act.

The Paradise Dam was approved in 2002 and in 2003 the conditions of the approval were varied to include the following condition: "Burnett Water Pty Ltd must install a fish transfer device on the Burnett River Dam suitable for the lungfish. The fishway will commence when the dam becomes operational."

Burnett Water Pty Ltd installed an upstream fishway and separate downstream fishway on the dam but WBBCC alleged these were not “suitable for lungfish”. A series of pictures showing the dam and the fishways is available here. The trial was originally listed for 4 weeks commencing on 7 September 2009 but on the first day of the hearing it was adjourned until 9 November 2009 after the respondent applied to the Federal Environment Minister to amend the condition on which the case is based. The Minister subsequently refused to amend the condition. The proceedings commenced in late 2008 and the trial was held on 9 – 23 November 2009. Due to the illness of one of the witnesses, it was adjourned part-heard until 1 February 2010. The judgment was reserved for over a year before being delivered on 4 March 2011. The Court dismissed the application.

The Paradise Dam, some of the evidence in the court case and subsequent data on the impacts and operation of the dam is the focus of the following lecture on water management in Queensland (the discussion of the dam commences at 8:55 on the counter):

(TRANSCRIPTION of lecture by myself) (My comments in Times New Roman italics)

“I wanted to explore how complicated and difficult environmental regulations are when you deal with long term, highly complex problems like damming a river and then managing the dam. Also the importance of monitoring requirements and approval conditions – you’ll see that while there were monitoring requirements put in place for this dam, in practice they mean bugger all because we are monitoring it and seeing that it is a DISASTER, ecologically, a complete disaster … like you could have just about dropped a nuclear bomb on the river at that point, like a small localised nuclear bomb, and you would have had pretty well the same impact as this dam, ecologically (& culturally). So we’re monitoring it and we can see that it’s a huge problem but no one wants to do anything about it, basically because it’s a government-owned dam, and it’s just too hard. (Nor could you – it doesn’t matter what anyone says or does, even the world’s experts – the government are wilfully ignoring them and disregarding everything anyone says or does, even the world experts…this to me is criminal negligence of their pledged duty of office)

“Environmental legislation may be partly symbolic designed to satisfy international obligations or to quiet public interest groups with the tacit understanding between government and regulators of under-enforcement.” Briody M and Prenzier T: “The enforcement of environmental protection laws in Queensland: A case of regulatory capture? (1998)

Don’t be naive and believe that just because the law says something should be protected that it actually will be, as these two authors said back in 1998 talking about the enforcement of environmental protection laws. I think that is a huge reality and if you look at our legal system on paper, its actually pretty good – where it falls down is that we lack a regulator, either in a state level or at a commonwealth level, who actually enforces their laws effectively, so we get bullshit put into application processes like this Carmichael mine, and the government ticks it off because it’s got a pretty cover on it and lots of impressive maps and is prepared by a big consultancy. Tick tick tick tick tick; it goes through and doesn’t get enforced even what gets approved. But I also don’t want you to be cynical in thinking it doesn’t make any difference, it doesn’t work, it’s just no good, why would we bother… because environmental regulation does actually make a difference – sure it’s not good enough and it could be dramatically improved, but it does actually make a big difference, and if you think about it, there’s no other better tool that were going to create for placing control on activities, but it’s imperfect.

So this dam was built on the Burnett River – this is a picture taken a little over ten years ago on the river – so you see a beautiful slow-flowing river – if you went back there now …I’ve actually been back there with some honour students, we paddled exactly where this picture was taken, and basically there’s about 30 meters of water at this point – this whole valley has been flooded for the dam. And this section of the river is also flooded. This is actually where the dam reservoir wall is. Notice you’ve got this wide, slow-flowing river – it does have huge floods and I’ll show you some images of floods in a moment, but they are rare (not that rare, eg there have been two major flooding events and numerous smaller floods just since the dam was built) and for most of the time it is a wide, slow-flowing, sinuous river. (another pic) This picture is taken actually where the dam wall is built – this was taken in 2003, so right now there’s 40 metres of concrete on top of this river bed.

(My photo of kalliwa beach, the only camping place in the NP - note small waterfall)

(My photo looking downstream from Kalliwa Hut)

But if you rewind back ten years and you look at this from a fish’s perspective, it was a great environment for mobility, easy to move upstream because the water’s slow flowing, and downstream. For lungfish, a species that’s endemic to this river and the Mary River …it’s been translocated to other rivers (unsuccessfully) but this is one of its core habitats. It feeds amongst the macrophytes – large water weeds that you can see there, they have little snails on them, algae and the like…the lungfish do a lot of feeding in that, their young grow in that (the ‘increase sites’ that Mavis Hawins refers to) so they really love these large macrophyte beds, that’s their best habitat. So when you build a dam on that you lose all that shallow slow-moving water and the entire macrophyte habitat – so, a huge loss of habitat for aquatic species. (Prof Jean Joss quote at the dam lawsuit re the fish lift: “Even if the lift DID work, there will be no breeding habitat left on the river for the lungfish.” and the critically endangered Elseya turtle? How do they negotiate the dam?)

So you’ve basically plonked this massive concrete structure in the middle of the river. Now the major impacts of building a dam like this is 1) You’ve destroyed over 40 km of river habitat (including Bowden Creek -and Kalliwa Creek?- which was not excised from the NP by the govt’s act and therefore flooded illegally) 2) caused major changes in downstream flow regimes and 3) it’s a major barrier to fish passage and there’s also significant fish mortality on the stepped spillway. (12.29)

Just to give you a bit of context, this is a map of dams and weirs. (He defines the difference between dams, weirs and barrages) The Burnett River where this dam was built is actually the most heavily impounded river catchment in Queensland. The Burnett River (Paradise Dam) is the 10^th largest dam in terms of storage capacity. The Burnett River flows out at Bundaberg- it’s a lovely river system. The next map shows all the tributaries coming in, and all those little blue boxes are names of the big dams and weirs in the catchment - there’s 23 dams in the catchment, mostly in the upper catchment – the paradise dam is in the lower catchment.

The next map “Lungfish distribution within the Burnett Basin” – the red section is their core distribution, so that’s the mid and lower reaches of the river once it comes down out of the high country…the yellow is some limited lungfish distribution, but the Paradise Dam, as you can see, is smack bang in its core distribution. Now the lungfish doesn’t move out to sea, it basically stayed within the river system so the population exists, moves around and breeds within it, so distribution is important in its long-term survival.

Has anyone seen a lungfish? Lots of places have them in a tank (…which is horribly cruel! How much anxiety do you think they experience, not being able to even move around let alone mate or fulfill any of their biological imperatives? The DPI in Brisbane had one in a small tank in its foyer the last time I was there…just sitting there, not moving…) We’ve found the fossil record to confirm the species has been around for about 400 million years (Actually the Australian lungfish is only 100 million years plus old, but phenomenally primeval anyway) (he explains the lungfish breathing process) The lungfish is one of the rare species that has a rudimentary lung, so not only can it breathe in water, but it can actually breathe in air and absorb oxygen and release carbon dioxide. And when they were discovered back in 1893, they were seen as this amazing scientific discovery and were hailed as one of the links between animals moving from the oceans onto land. So these are the Australian lungfish endemic to SE Qld, found nowhere else in the world except the Burnett River and the Mary River, a little bit to the south. When they were discovered, their numbers were thought to be a bit low, so they were moved around to the Brisbane River (where their numbers have crashed in recent years, may be locally extinct now) (North Pine River? Which others - research)

Now the reason for this dam, if you rewind back to 1999 when there was an election. Peter Beattie was the premier, he was going to an election and the opposition, the Nationals promised that if they were elected they would build a dam on the Burnett, so Peter Beattie immediately came out and said if Labor was elected, they would also build a dam on the Burnett. So Labor won the election and it then became an election commitment, so Beattie was committed to delivering it before there had been any EIS or anything done, so it was a political commitment. Actually the department at the time was saying, we don’t actually need it, there’s enough water impounded already in this river system, but it was a political imperative. So the government created a government-owned corporation called Burnett Water Pty Ltd. And it was charged with constructing the dam.

Now it is a wide and shallow river at this point, so they needed to build this massive wall to get a significant amount of water captured in it. So you can see the wall here, overlaid on what the river was before, and see the limits of where the dam reservoir would reach. This is the dam now it’s been built. So it went through an EIS in 2001, 2002. It was approved at a state level by the coordinator general (INDICT HIM? See transcript below) under the public works state organisation. It was also approved at a commonwealth level under the EPBC Act. (This was demonstrable eco vandalism intent!) It then was constructed in 2003-5…I actually remember… I went up there before it was constructed as part of a protest… there were protests about it and speeches – I remember standing on the banks, I drove up with Drew Hutton and we were standing where this photo was taken amongst the trees… basically, there was a big protest about it. (It wasn’t really, there were only a couple of dozen people there, notably 3 elder Aboriginal women, one of which was Mavis Hawkins – I gave her a postcard of the black swans on the river) Despite all the opposition, it was built. (“all”? Locally there was Graeme Armstrong, Lyndy Marshall and myself. Otherwise, Jill Pechey from Maleny, Roger Curry and his small grassroots conservation group who ran the only court case, and Prof Jean Joss...don’t know of anyone else actively fighting this dam) This is what it looks like now…here you’ve got the dam reservoir. This is the water intake tower.

The big wall stops water moving downstream but you need to be able to release it in a controlled way to deliver water to farmers, so that water tower has a passage through the dam wall. If you get a flood in the river and you’re unable to release the water quickly enough, you won’t be able to control what happens to the flood, you don’t just want it spilling around the edges of your dam. So dams always have a spillway to control the flood. So that’s the spillway. This river has enormous floods (The dam was supposed to hold the water up to 100 year flood level) and the spillway is 470 meters across…it’s enormous! (Next pic closer) So if we go a bit closer…here’s the water tower with grills here and behind is basically intakes. Because this dam was being built in a phase where there were all these modern environmental laws, we had the Water Act, we’ve got all of the laws in place now. There was a lot of community opposition to it. (No there was not, the locals were all for it and the EDO squibbed the fight they had been commissioned to conduct after Bob Brown came to town and offered Larissa Waters a place in parliament – must ask EDO Qld, nicely, for copies of all the evidence they had accumulated against the dam up until they abandoned the case, due to there being “no further avenues to pursue”.) The proponent said, in answer to the fact that it’s going to destroy the habitat of the lungfish, it’s going to be stopped from moving along with all the other fish, the proponent said Fine – we will build a fish transfer device that will be suitable for the lungfish. And so they built a downstream fish passage and an upstream fish passage. I’ll just explain that. This is the entrance to the downstream fish passage. Now you guys might not be dam engineers or lungfish experts, but can anyone point out to me a minor problem with this fish passage device? (Reply: It’s too high.) It’s too high! Does that deserve a chocolate? It’s out of the water! Now the lungfish, remarkable as they are, are not known for being able to fly. So the dam was built in 2003-5 and commenced operation in 2005. This picture was taken in 2008, but the water still hadn’t reached the entrance. Later in 2008 the water level had actually dropped even more …you can actually see the pipe going down for the fish transfer device.

So a court case started about this time, which I was involved in as a lawyer and I spent pretty much a year of my life working on it. (Commendable commitment from Chris McGrath – he practices what he preaches) It wasn’t so much actually about this dam, but right at this time there was another dam proposed, the Traveston Crossing dam on the Mary River where the other lungfish core population was, and the Queensland government wanted to build that, and the proponent of that dam was saying, ah we will build a fish passage transfer device, look at the great one we built on the Paradise Dam! But basically the fish transfer was not working. Mainly for the dam that was proposed on the Mary river, I acted for a conservation group that brought litigation against the Paradise Dam to try and enforce conditions about the fish passage, which said the fish transfer device had to be suitable for lungfish, and one of the main points we made was, the fish passage was built too high (Lengthy explanation about how the downhill fish transfer works – fish in a narrow pipe in utter blackness) Anyone want to guess how much the downhill transfer device costs? $8 million out of a total dam cost of $250. So to go up is a lot more difficult. So they release water that is meant to attract the fish and then they are meant to swim up into this culvert, and there is a box called a hopper, which goes up on rails to the top…if you imagine a little mini skip rubbish bin. This is it after its been operating for a while because it sits in water…HUGE maintenance problems, like it constantly broke down, there’s all these sensors...if anything goes wrong it has to stop and you’ve got to repair it. When they initially built it (its nice and yellow here that’s before it got covered in algae) it didn’t have a cage on the top of it and they found the fish were jumping out, which is a problem for the fish when your 40 meters up in the air and below you is concrete… so they put a cage on top of it. This is a diagram of actually what it’s supposed to do. This is video of the hopper going up, just about to reach the top (Extremely loud noise of heavy machinery! Will the fish all end up deaf?) An enormous amount of weight, so you can imagine there’s a lot of health and safety concerns. (He mentions to his students that the lift looks like a joke, but it isn’t – they actually built this and expected it to work…and the court found NOTHING WRONG WITH IT, even though it has NEVER TRANSFERRED ONE LUNGFISH and is constantly out of action! The judge dismissed the case and ordered the small conservation group to pay an enormous court bill – find out who he was! - was demonstrably negligent!) (and what about turtles, do they use it? do they get smashed to bits in that tiny pipe going down or in the tiny cage going up, like they do when they were swept over the dam wall…twice.)

So that fish lift that doesn’t work isn’t actually the worst thing for the lungfish on this dam, the worst thing… Basically the data shows that both fish transfer devices don’t work, that lungfish don’t use them … I should ask first, what do you reckon the uphill device cost? $12 million. So $20 million for this transfer device. There is no data of them using that downstream device at all, for some reason they don’t like swimming into that tiny entrance and into that black pipe. Actually it was quite funny …in a way, sad in another way – we were there with the judge standing in this court case, we were standing on top of the downstream fishway in the water box, I was looking down on it – you can stand on top of it and there’s this grill where you can actually look down into it, and the judge was looking down into it and the other lawyers (Who were these lawyers working for the government? Name and shame - they somehow managed to persuade the judge to find NOTHING WRONG with this ridiculously insane device, and charged the government, us, $3million for their services, which Roger Currie’s group had to repay) and this cormorant came swooping in across the dam reservoir and it splashed down a few meters in front of the entrance to it and went straight into the top of the downstream fishway and was basically fishing there …the splash made everyone jump because it came out of nowhere, and this bird was clearly doing what it did every day which was to sit in the entrance of the fishway and eat everything small enough that goes in there, which is a big problem for fish transfer devices generally because if you constrict fish passage then predators get to know that’s a good place to catch things…so basically all the little fish are getting eaten, and lungfish just don’t go into it.

So they’ve spent $20 million …and the two fishways have basically been broken for 95% of the time since they were constructed in 2005, so they’ve operated for less than 5% of the time for the last 10 years, with huge maintenance problems. Question: why couldn’t they have put the hole closer to the bottom? Basically, there were additional costs so they were skipping. The really big problem though is actually the spillway…over 400 meters across, is you go in close…(pic) again to save some money, they’ve built it with steps to slow the water down. So these steps are half a meter across…can you see a problem for all the lungfish, turtles and eels that get swept over? Basically they get slammed all the way down, and if you stand there in a flood, you can see the turtles ricocheting off, and lungfish bouncing off and getting their heads bashed in… and we’re going to look at some horrible pictures in a minute of dead fish that have been killed by this thing, so it’s literally killing thousands, probably tens of thousands of organisms. And lungfish get to about a meter and a half, and are almost as tall as us, and there’s no way you could go over as a human, it would be seen as way too dangerous. This is a small flood event; you can see it just cascading down. This is a much bigger flood event (2010). (Played some video of the flood, deafening roar)

This is the February 2011 flood that followed, and the water was much higher here, you can see that because there’s no little apron, the water’s going over and not striking, or not getting kicked out. This flood actually came back to bite them on the arse, trying to be cheap with the spillway, because this flood actually scoured out the base of the dam so badly, and it destroyed the control tower here, and ripped out the bottom of this (pointing with curser). At the beginning of last year the government had to spend $30 million to rebuild the base of the dam. So they saved maybe a few hundred thousand in concrete with the stepped spillway then they had to rebuild it because the flood came and knocked it out. And this flood also destroyed the ability of the dam to release water and it also damaged both of the fishways, so after this flood both of the fishways were out of operation from February 2011 till about midway through last year. You might think that when you build a dam, you would build it to withstand a flood, but obviously that’s not what happened here.

This is a picture of the dam in flood, you can see the massive amount of water, you can see the reservoir behind it. Just to give you an idea about what happens to the fish, this is the North Pine Dam “Fish kill at North Pine Dam 24^th September 2009 (research current status of lungfish in this river and North Pine Dam) which is much smaller and as I said, lungfish have been translocated to this river. In September 2009 there was a release from this dam, so that they opened these spillway gates, and basically where these pictures were taken …sorry, graphic images of dead fish …here’s a whole lot of lungfish (“Fish kill at North Pine Dam 24 September 2009” - Pic by David Kreuz) …they have massive head injuries, basically they come out of the spillway and crash down on these water-dissipating concrete bollards at the base.

So that’s a relatively small dam, and that’s pretty well what’s happening on the Paradise Dam and there’s plenty of evidence of that – there were monitoring requirements on the dam operators imposing the conditions and they commissioned the Dept. of Fishery is to monitor and produce reports – this was the last report they produced in 2012 (“Evidence of large numbers of fish injuries and death on the stepped spillway at Paradise Dam. “Source: DEEDI report on Paradise Dam DSFW Monitoring Program 2012) and it was an amazing report because it was pretty clear that the fisheries guys had just had enough – this report was just absolutely castigating of the operation of the dam in terms of what it was doing to fish. Data indicates that the Qld lungfish injured and killed during passage of the dam while during high and low flow events over the spillway (these are some pictures of what they found…so this is a picture of a living but severely injured Queensland lungfish captured downstream of the spillway on the 22^nd March 2010. The sampling of this relatively small report ended in 2010 – there was no data collected in the 2011 and 2012 floods…so massive descaling and head injuries.

“In the early stage of the spillway flow period fish were observed and recorded on video passing over the spillway wall, striking the wall surface and being projected into the air before striking the wall again. The descent of fish such as long-finned eel could sometimes be followed and the fish retrieved, all long-finned eels retrieved in such a manner had obvious strike injuries and were deceased when collected. Larger fish species such as lungfish, golden perch and barramundi exhibited localised injuries consistent with striking hard objects. Injuries were extensive and obvious and consisted of abrasions, descaling and head damage (example figure 28: Deceased golden perch that was collected downstream of the Paradise Dam spillway on the 11^th March 2010. Note the strike mark extending from the dorsal to the ventral area.) (I believe virtually all the older lungfish that existed on this river before the dam will now have been killed by the dam in one way or another, mostly by the numerous flooding events, as with the turtles. Need to find out whether there was a biodiversity count or assessment made, especially of lungfish and turtles, before the dam was built – ask Graham Armstrong and Fisheries. A count now will determine roughly how many have been killed by the Qld and Federal government ministers who approved this dam – they also need naming and shaming, easy research.) What do you think caused that? It’s probably been thrown sideways into one of the steps and had probably had its back broken.

So this is some of the data from March 2010 (below) when there were relatively small overflows – they actually found…just think about the logistics of going out onto a flooding river and looking for fish that have come over a dam wall – its bloody hard – a lot of them would be lost but they actually found 152 dead lungfish…they actually found them. They also looked at releases from the environmental tower, so that’s actually through the dam release, and this is a deceased Qld lungfish displaying severe injuries collected after releases through the water tower on September 2010. This is a deceased long-finned eel with a broken spine collected after releases made through the environmental tower on the 15^th September 2010. This is a picture that just about made me throw up when I saw it because I’d been working on this dam for pretty much a year and I saw this and it’s just sickening …this is pieces of fish found directly at the release point of the water tower immediately after being shut down. So basically fish are getting sucked in when they release water, and they go through the release mechanism and they get shredded. So this fish has been completely shredded and that’s just the skin that’s left.

So how did we get to this? We get to this through a full-blown EIS done by the coordinator general under the State Development Public Works Organisation Act 1971 (Qld) and fully approved under the EPBC Act. Pic: “The Paradise Dam was assessed and approved in 2001-2003 under all State and Federal laws. It underwent a full EIS under the SDPWOA.

So between 2001 and 2003 this dam got all its approvals… full EIS, modern laws, everything we’ve got now we had then and to me that’s one of the most concerning things. This dam was not approved back in the 1950’s when we didn’t know any better…WE KNEW. We had every law we’ve got now and yet we still approved it.

How does the analysis of impacts in the EIS measure up after years of operation of the dam?) I think it’s really interesting to go back and look at the EIS with the reality of what actually happened. For example, this is one of the graphs in the EIS (Pic: Graph of pre-dam and post-dam expected flow in Burnett River downstream of the Paradise Dam site presented in EIS for the dam.) talking about pre and post dam expected monthly flow downstream of the dam over a year. Basically what this graph is meant to suggest is that the dam takes a little bit of water during the wet season, but often there is no change and in the dry season there’s a little bit more water released supplying water to downstream farmers who then buy it in the dry season. This is what it actually looks like in reality. (Pic: Releases compared to net flow) Data of inflows into the dam from 2005 to 2009. The data shows that actually they didn’t release anything…they had all this water coming in but they didn’t release it. One thing, the dam operators won’t release any information about water sales because that’s commercial in confidence, you can’t get that under freedom of information laws, but you can infer from this data, the only way they deliver water is by releasing it to downstream farmers…if they’re not releasing any, they’re not selling any. Now from 2005 to 2008 there was a massive drought in Qld. They had plenty of water but they weren't releasing anything to downstream farmers. Right now no-one wants the water either, everyone’s in flood…the farmers don’t need the water during the wet periods, but it’s also clear from this data that they don’t even need it during an enormous drought. This is a really clear indicator that the dam was completely bloody unnecessary. You’re not selling any water! This is what’s making my heart break is that if we were doing something good with the water, if we were actually generating jobs and earning money, you might think Oh well, sad for the fish, but…you know – but were not actually even doing that!

Question from the students: How would they get rid of the dam? (that deserved 3 chocolates) Well technically you could basically dismantle it for around $20-30 million …the real problem is politics. There is no way, politically, that the government would agree (which is why it has to be tried in a UN court for grand ecocide) …and they’ve just spent $20 million fixing up the foot of the bloody thing, they could have put that into ripping the whole f***ing thing out.

Another Question (gets last chocolate). So it was constructed under a Labor government, why didn’t the LNP just say this is a massive Labor stuff up …basically because the LNP is a bit torn, it’s a massive dam project, they’re all about constructing big infrastructure and jobs. Question: Who are the stakeholders who would fight to keep the dam there? Well there’s a whole heap of agricultural industries downstream (Most farmers already had off-stream storage that they collected during the many floods…that was perfectly sufficient for them before the dam, and would be the same again.) A lot of the industries don’t want to criticise this project because they see these [projects as generally good and they want them. (But most people would not want the carnage the dam has caused and will continue to cause into the foreseeable future, but this information is mostly hidden from them, such as where the Zamia Palms were relocated to…) They’re not using it, that’s right, but no-one’s going to criticise it, even if these projects don’t stack up financially. (Or environmentally) Another question: Looking at the ecological aspects of this, aren’t the lungfish a really important species and isn’t this a problem, and the answer is YES YES YES! But pretty well the commonwealth environment minister and the department have wiped their hands of the operation of the dam (CRIMINAL NEGLECT) …there’s been questions on notice from Greens senator Larissa Waters, trying to put pressure on them, but the commonwealth dept has said, were happy with the operation.

Well anyway, there’s a heap of problems concerned with restricting lungfish movement, a lot of work done by the DPI in tracking fish, so what they do they catch the fish and rock it to sleep (actually they electrocute and stun them) then they turn it over and put a little tag in it, a pit tag, a passive integrated transponder, and then put sensors in the creek and when the fish swims next to the sensor it basically records it. (Keeps moving away from the dam wall, no macrophytes, can’t go upstream because of a weir so they’re stuck.)

Financial balance sheet for dam: Construction cost $250,000,000 (downstream fishway cost $8,000,000, upstream fishway costs $12,000,000, annual loss of interest @ 8% $20,000,000 (cost for repairs, two times!) Operating costs unknown but more than $100,000 per year. Water sales/income from the dam appear to be virtually nil.

Roger Curry’s court case 2008-2011 alleging breach of conditions 3 of EPBC Act approval: must install a transfer device, and we lost - basically we got overrun by the legal team on the other side and at the end of the day the government bankrupted my client with a $3 million cost - they had spent $3 million defending the action, we had a budget of about $150,000 so you can see it was a David and Goliath fight …unfortunately David got squashed. The conservation group challenging the operation of the dam could not get any dam engineers to work for the group as an expert witness in the case. Why do you think that was the case? In my view the regulatory conditions failed utterly in this case.

Table 14: Total number of deceased large bodied fish collected or observed following spillway overtopping events and environmental tower releases in March and September 2010 (details below)

Species name, Spillway mortalities, Environmental tower mortalities.

Bony herring 359 13 / Qld lungfish 152 13 / Long-finned eel 90 4 / Freshwater catfish 34 NR / Golden perch 25 7 / Striped mullet 13 NR / Spangled perch 7 1 / Barramundi 6 NR / Hyrti’s tandan 5 NR / Australian bass 2 NR / Rendahl’s catfish 1 1 / Snub-nosed garfish 1 1 / Banded grunter 2 3

The Department at the time was saying we don’t actually need another dam, there’s enough impoundments in the system, but Beattie had already promised it.

--------------------------------------------------------

NOTES

How easily the State Government slipped legislation through to build the Paradise Dam:

From Qld.State Government Parliament on http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/tableoffice/HALnks/021205/QBSA.pdf</A></FONQld. Building Services Authority and Other Legislation Amendment Bill (to excise the stretch of the Burnett River that runs through the Goodnight Scrub National Park so the Paradise dam can be built)

After waffling on for 18 minutes, Jeff Seeney said:

Mr. Seeney: In conclusion I look forward to the day when the Paradise dam is completed. I anticipate that it will be completed in such a way as to enhance the natural environment and provide the economic benefits we all want to see.

Hon. D.M. WELLS (Murrumba ALP) (Minister for Environment): In reply I thank Hon. Members for their support of the motion, in particular the Honorable Member for Burnett in whose electorate this occurs. I thank the Hon member for Callide for his 18 minute keynote address on the subject. The fact that he gave us such a detailed expiation of those ideas was much more satisfying than had he given the House the pleasure of his 2 minute summation, which would have just as neatly encapsulated everything that he said. As for the suggestion by the Member for Keppel that there was a lack of an environmental impact study with respect to this, there is no environmental impact in changing lines on a map (!!!) and that is all that this does. The trees will be in the same place and the birds will sing largely the same songs. (How did they get away with telling such LIES? The trees won’t even EXIST any more…the remaining trees after the area has been logged will all be drowned, causing a great deal of pollution as they decay under water… the birds will be either killed or forced to fly to an unsuitable habitat or another bird’s territory where they probably won’t survive. Blatantly misleading ... and all the MPs bought it?! As if changing the boundaries to take the river out of the National Park, and then blocking it’s main channel with a gigantic dam, and flooding 45 kms of endangered species habitat upstream and blocking fish passage downstream would not have any impact on the environment! As if the changing of the boundary was the ONLY issue to consider!) The amount that is being transferred out of the Goodnight Scrub is less than the amount that is being transferred in. I can assure the Hon. Member for Keppel that the quality of the land that is being transferred in to the Park is of the same set of values as the land which is being transferred out. (More LIES; a few scrappy acres of degraded bush tagged on to the outside of the park is nowhere near equal in value to the biodiverse river, the very heart of the National Park, the jewel in its crown) This is a net gain for conservation. (It was a huge, tragic loss for conservation and future generations) There will be much more land in the Goodnight Scrub National Park than there was prior to this series of moves (but no river - Kalliwa beach on a river bend was the only camping site in the National Park - to be inundated along with all the other beautiful wide sandy beaches, six kilometres of rocky rapids, a waterfall, turtle island and numerous source & increase sites) and there will be more funds available for the Environment Department to address the issues of National Parks in this area. (Nat Parks funding was subsequently slashed) This is not about building the Paradise Dam, this is about improving the Goodnight Scrub National Park. (No, it’s about GUTTING the Goodnight Scrub NP and destroying for ever priceless ecology and cultural heritage.)

Motion agreed to. (...to their eternal shame.)

----------------------------------

(How it sailed through the federal parliament)

Revocation Act - Goodnight Scrub NP

REVOCATION OF STATE FOREST AREAS

Notice of Motion

Hon. D. M. WELLS (Murrumba-ALP) (Minister for Environment) (5.50 p.m.): I lay upon the table of the House a proposal under section 32 of the Nature conservation Act 1992 and a brief explanation of the proposal.

I give notice that after the expiration of at least 14 sitting days as provided in the Nature conservation Act 1992, I shall move-

(1) That this House requests the governor in Council to make a revocation by regulation of dedicated protected areas under the Nature Conservation Act 1992 as follows-

(a) that part of Goodnight Scrub National Park described as Lot 1 on AP9886 and containing an area of about 55 hectares, and

(b) that part of goodnight Scrub Resources Reserve described as Lot 2 on AP9887 and containing an area of about 425 hectares. (480 hectares of biodiversity hotspot comprising a tangled vine rainforest and a river ecosystem with plant and animal species from Gondwana …lungfish over 100 million years old, were removed from the National Park…correlate with how much was ACTUALLY lost)

(2) That Mr Speaker forward a copy of this resolution to the Minister for Environment and the clerk of the Parliament for submission to the Governor in Council. (Did the Governor have the final say? Culpable?)

The areas to be revoked are those parts of the Goodnight Scrub National Park and Goodnight Scrub resources Reserve that are likely to be impacted by the proposed Burnett River Dam near Biggenden. The proposed construction of the dam was authorised following an environmental assessment under the State Development and Public Works Organisation Act 1971 which was accredited under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 of the Commonwealth. Detailed modelling investigations have identified the potentially impacted areas of the national park and resources reserve. The proposed Burnett River Dam will have a capacity of up to 300,000 megalitres and make controlled discharges of water for agricultural, commercial, domestic and environmental uses. (Evidence is that the dam has made zero discharges so far) The impact of the dam on the protected areas ranges from inundation at full supply to inundation in a one in 100-year flood. These impacts are considered inconsistent with the management principles of the protected area. (So wreaking such mass destruction over such a vast area of highly valued ecology ‘like an atom bomb hit it’ would be unthinkable and definitely illegal, but individuals in government can commit such massive destruction and get away with it? It is STILL A HORRENDOUS CRIME made worse due to willful ignorance….”THEY KNEW…”)

The proposed revocation will remove from the national park those areas that will be so impacted. Subsequently, other areas will be added to the national park to replace the areas impacted, thus allowing the dam to proceed while preserving and enhancing the integrity of the national park. (LIES – in no way do a few scappy acres of degraded bushland in the outskirts of the Park replace the unique ecosystem of the river –research exact type- and the native vegetation along 45 kms of its banks.)

-----------------------------------------------------
Pest fish found in Burnett River 19th Mar 2012

THE declared noxious pest fish species tilapia has been found in the Burnett River at Jones Weir, near Mundubbera. Last week, during a routine Fisheries Queensland survey, staff observed a number of tilapia. Tilapia was first officially recorded in the Boondooma Dam in May 2000 but until now, none had been found further downstream. Recent flooding in Queensland is thought to have brought the fish down the Boyne River from Boondooma dam.

from Freshwater Fishing & Stocking Association of Queensland Inc. under Cania Dam Monitoring

"As for the poor old Burnett River, nothing will now stop tilapia entering the system when Boondooma goes over. Add to this sleepy cod from Wuruma and Bjelke. Paradise Dam will provide ideal still water habitat, which will ensure both species multiply quickly. This will pose serious problems for the lungfish. The same will apply to bass, mullet, and goodness knows how many smaller native species. So much for sustainability and biodiversity.

------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/lungfish-research-grant-denied-as-population-flounders-20101028-175lt.html

Lungfish research grant denied as population flounders

By Tony Moore 29 October 2010

Queensland has missed out on a $2 million grant to study the state's lungfish population, despite little being known about their numbers in the Brisbane region.

No state government agency has been able to calculate how many lungfish, now listed as a vulnerable species, inhabit the Wivenhoe, Somerset or North Pine dams, nor can they tell how many there are in the Brisbane River.

Dr Anne Kemp, from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Marine Science, wants government to do more to protect lungfish.

However, the Department of Primary Industries and Seqwater have confirmed there were no longer lungfish at Enoggera Reservoir.

Lungfish, a freshwater species classified as "vulnerable", are perhaps best known for stopping the construction of the Traveston Crossing Dam.

Queensland yesterday missed out on a $2 million Australian Research Council grant, which was designed to count Brisbane's lungfish and explore their breeding. When approached by brisbanetimes.com.au yesterday, no state government minister was aware of the ARC decision.

However, Seqwater was able to confirm that no lungfish eggs had been found at either the Wivenhoe or North Pine Dam since 2009.

That added weight to fears by two prominent lungfish experts that the population in the Brisbane River catchment is in decline.

University of Queensland Centre for Marine Science lungfish researcher Anne Kemp said she was disappointed so few people appeared to care that the lungfish was dying out.

"No-one listens to me. I don't know how aware they are of it. But you read the Minister for Primary Industries and Fisheries [Tim Mulherin] where he insists that lungfish are spawning regularly in the Brisbane River and I know they are not," Dr Kemp said.

"I presume he gets the information from DPI, but it's not true. It's not true."

Mr Mulherin was unavailable for comment yesterday. Other ministers unavailable were Climate Change and Sustainability Minister Kate Jones and Natural Resources Minister Stephen Robertson.

The DPI confirmed to brisbanetimes.com.au it had not done any recent lungfish population research in Brisbane River.

Dr Kemp said she had not found a lungfish egg downstream from Wivenhoe Dam for five years.

"You would collect a couple of hundred every season in the river, which was enough for my work," she said.

"But I have not found any since 2005-06, and that last year I found five eggs."

Dr Kemp said that was why she was initially excited to learn some lungfish eggs had been found at Logan's Inlet at Wivenhoe Dam.

However those eggs did not fertilise and no other lungfish eggs have been found in either Wivenhoe or North Pine dam, Seqwater confirmed last night.

"Surveys were completed during the 2009 breeding season [August to November] to determine if lungfish were spawning in Wivenhoe and North Pine Dams, where they were known to occur," Seqwater said in a statement.

"These surveys involved measuring the numbers of eggs in the shallow of the lakes and monitoring their survival over the breeding season. Although numerous eggs were discovered, no surviving juveniles were found."

It concluded that the varying water temperatures in dams meant they were not suited to lungfish breeding.

Meanwhile sources confirmed that 36 lungfish were found dead near the bottom of the Wivenhoe Dam spillway after stormwater was released a fortnight ago.

A lungfish found at Breakfast Creek this week was initially believed to have been washed downriver from Enoggera Reservoir, but was now considered more likely to have come in Enoggera Creek.

Twelve lungfish were recovered from the swirling pools at the bottom of the dam and returned.

In 2009, 80 lungfish died when Seqwater opened the gates at North Pine Dam.

Meanwhile Dr Kemp said she feared for the future of the species.

"No-one is prepared to look after them. No-one is prepared to help them," she said.

"They can just live in the reservoir until they die of old age and nobody in the government, or the government agencies seems to be able to do anything to help them."

---------------------------------------------------------

http://www.sweetwaterfishing.com.au/Forum/index.php?topic=3996.0

Paradise dam problem. July 18, 2012

Did anyone see this story in yesterday’s courier mail.

THE Paradise Dam has become a $240 million killing machine for hundreds of fish, including the threatened lungfish.

The fishways which were an important condition of the dam being built in 2005 do not work and the dam's stepped spillway is a death trap.

The $20 million fishways were supposed to allow the animals to swim past the dam wall in either direction. Going upstream, they are transported by a "fish lift" which uses large bins to transport them over the dam. Going downstream, the fish are supposed to swim into a large pipe which delivers them to the bottom of the dam wall.

Instead they are being killed on the spillway, which - rather than being smooth - was designed with a series of steps to dissipate water energy. In overflows, fish, turtles and eels are smashed to their deaths on the concrete steps.

A study by government-owned agency SunWater found the spillway, 80km south-west of Bundaberg, was killing lungfish at such a rate that it would have a major impact on their numbers.

In 22 days, 733 fish were killed when washed over the dam's spillway, of which 152 were large lungfish.

SunWater yesterday declined to respond to questions on the fishways or the stepped wall.

A spokeswoman said its reports had gone to the Agriculture Department for a response.

"SunWater will work closely with the department ... and consult with stakeholders to address issues raised in the report," she said.

Water Minister Mark McArdle said he would immediately request a full briefing.

"If this information is correct it would be of serious concern to me and the Government," he said.

The controversial dam, finished in 2005, was an election promise by former Labor premier Peter Beattie. At the time, Labor was being pressured by the sugar industry for more irrigation supplies.

The then-Opposition backed farmers, labelling the government anti-infrastructure.

Barrister Chris McGrath, who lost a court case in which he argued the fishways did not work, said the study covered only fish that were found, not those swept away and focused only on 2010, not last year's floods in which more animals would have died.

"It must be complete carnage," he said.

Dr McGrath called on SunWater to convert the stepped structure to a smooth spillway.

and this cute photo in similar story on ABC net. Cheers, Ray

ADDITIONAL INFO:

(go to www.active-green.org/mailaction.php?id=157, www.burnett.net.au/~garm & follow links, google Paradise Dam & Burnett River dam, esp. QCC submissions)

The President Burnett Water For All Group Statement of Key Issues, under Cultural heritage for Aboriginal people stated:
The Wakka Wakka Jinda, Gurang Gurang and other groups affirm:
... They would suffer strong spiritual loss, as cultural life is centred around the river, particularly for food. How can this be replaced or valued?
... The Paradise Dam cuts an important traditional pathway (migratory trail/trading route/Rainbow Serpent Songline) which was crossed in the biennial Bunya Nut Gathering at the Bunya Mountains. (this is at a place called 3 mile rapids, 6 kms of gently falling rocky river beds in the main river channel, the river's major riffle area that oxygenated the water for the lungfish & all other species major breeding grounds just downstream - all now destroyed by the Paradise dam .... update 12.3.08)
... According to Mavis Hawkins, president of the Wakka Wakka Jinda group - "We believe in the stories our Elders told us of the sacred places in MURULLBAKGERA , the 'river of the breathing fish’, now known as the Burnett River. The place where the turtle people lived and bred. (Increase & source site) These are special places to us and we do not want to loose them." (Mavis also identified another very significant women's place - a wailing wall for women in the Burnett River gorge - in a letter to editor printed in the Central and Northern Burnett Times. There are also caves there which I'm sure must have been significant - all inundated now)

Mavis' letter in the CNBT (NB: Mavis died not long after the dam became operational, probably of a broken heart.)
Aboriginal Views
It’s time to stop building the dams and weirs.
We, the indigenous people of this area, are totally against any more destruction of this land and its natural water systems, or the natural flow of the rivers. WAMP (Burnett Water Allocation and Management Plan) are well aware that we are against any more destruction.
Already there are too many dams and weirs on the Burnett; water doesn't flow any more in these parts; you will drown in the mud, not the water. Where are the fish going to go? The Wakka Wakka People called the Burnett River "Murullbakgera" meaning "rivers of the breathing fish."
Another significant Aboriginal legend is that where the turtle people lived there is a wailing wall for Women.
The Burnett and Barambah are places of great respect for our people - they are sacred to us. It saddens and deeply distresses me when I see the rivers not flowing free. The government should concentrate more on fixing the roads instead of destroying land and rivers. Is the voice of Aboriginal people to be silenced again?
M Hawkins, Gayndah

Additional to Jeff Seeney: Are you aware that you will also be destroying a potential multi-million dollar eco-tourism industry on the river? Have you even had a LOOK at what you will destroy? Are you aware that the dam site is apparently also situated on a major fault line, and explosions from Mt. Perry have caused earth tremors further along this fault line at Coalstoun Lakes? (documented) In 2003 there was a 4.6 earthquake in this area, with its epicentre 20 kms east of Monto – it’s tremors were reported over a radial distance of 80 kms....the Paradise Dam construction site, where the building of the mega dam was underway, was within this radius.

One of the many submissions in vehement opposition to this dam:

Burnett Water For All – Submission to the 2003 National Competition Policy assessment on Water Reform

Burnett Water For All (BWFA) is a broad base of community and industry groups that joined together when it became clear that the Queensland Government was going to forge ahead with approval for Paradise Dam (Burnett River Dam) without fully considering the social, economic and environmental outcomes. BWFA opposes Paradise Dam because it is not environmentally, socially, or economically viable. The group's mission statement is "…to seek more equitable and less damaging water solutions for the whole of the Burnett catchment".

The following groups/ organisations have joined together under the aims and objectives of BWFA to voice their common objection to the proposed construction of Paradise Dam on the Burnett River, Queensland.

• Gayndah, Kingaroy, Murgon, Wondai, Nanango Shire Councils

• Burnett Catchment Care Association

• Sunfish – Fraser Coast Branch

• Queensland Seafood Industry Association

• Freshwater Fishing & Stocking Association of Queensland

• Wakka Wakka Jinda Indigenous Group

• Wide Bay Burnett Conservation Council

• Coalstoun Lakes Farming Group

• Monto Landcare Group

• Biggenden chamber of tourism and development

• Group of affected landholders- grazing and citrus

• Concerned citizens

There are a number of other groups who share Burnett Water For All’s views but fear the

political ramifications of publicly opposing the Dam.

(Possibly contact all these people for support for ecocide indictment)

----------------------------------------------------

Proof that the lungfish is dying out, or already disappeared from the Brisbane River where it was introduced in what year? : https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/lungfish-research-grant-denied-as-population-flounders-20101028-175lt.html

Lungfish research grant denied as population flounders

By Tony Moore 29 October 2010

Queensland has missed out on a $2 million grant to study the state's lungfish population, despite little being known about their numbers in the Brisbane region.

Dr Anne Kemp, from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Marine Science, wants government to do more to protect lungfish. Photo: Tony Moore