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I don't know that any government can be blamed for the flood crisis as it stands today. To say that Wivenhoe dam would prevent a reoccurance of the 74 floods is just political speak. Old Joe was good at that. The real fact is that the construction of such a dam serves a few purposes. 1. Generate electricity, 2. Provide drinking or irrigation water. Both these uses are far from conducive of preventing a flood as they require the dam to be kept as full as possible to maximize the use of the water.
For a dam to be truely used for flood prevention the dams would need to be kept empty. This is never going to happen. Politics and infrastructure needs say fill me up.
The one thing a dam such as Wivenhoe does do is provide a buffer in the event of minor flooding or short high rainfall events.
In this case it is apparent that Wivenhoe has held back a huge amount of water which would have had Brisbane in flood some 2 weeks ago and would have still been in flood today. When you look at a dam like Wivenhoe and try to work out the amount of water which was retained in dead storage over the huge surface area of the lake and the fact that it is currently holding 147.8 % of rated capacity. That is almost half the dams normal capacity used for flood mitigation purposes.
It would be impossible to flood proof any of our capital cities as they are all built on big flood plains. Some mitigation or reduction of risk is possible but thats about it.
It is either a risk we take or we move to higher ground. A hard one for sure.
I feel for everyone in QLD at the moment. Hope you are all safe and well.
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