THE picture of millions of megalitres of water running over the Burdekin Dam in Queensland has prompted renewed calls on social media for government action on more dams.
Phil Cop, posting on the SevereWeatherQld Facebook page, described the spilling dam as an “absolutely spectacular sight” with the water level at approximately 6 metres over the top of the spillway.
“Surprisingly this is only a moderate flood level for this system. Seeing it at a major level (8m) would be incredible but I think that would have catastrophic results downstream if that happened. The Burdekin bridge at Inkerman is currently just under major flood levels,” he said.
“The last time I was out here the water was 2.5m over the spillway and it’s hard to comprehend today is more than double that.”
Adelaide woman Jan Verrall, pointed out the frustration of many South Australians. “We’d love the Government to have some sense of foresight to put a pipeline tunnel through the Great Dividing Range into the Darling,” she posted.
“It wouldn’t cost that much. The water would then come down the Murray and serve South Australia. We’re in drought here. The Riverland growers would have water to grow all kinds of crops and our reservoirs could be maintained with good supplies of water, serving as far as Whyalla.
“If only there were more political Leaders like Sir Thomas Playford, who was a Cherry Grower at Norton Summit, in the Adelaide Hills. He became our Premier of South Australia. He instigated the Morgan-Whyalla pipeline, allowing the steelworks industry to go ahead at Whyalla.”
Townsville man Ray Boundy said governments had failed to go ahead with the second stage of the Burdekin. It was needed to create employment in the region and when the dam was built, people came from all over Australia.
He said all the preparation was done in the final months of the original build because they were supposed to proceed with Stage 2, so they didn’t have to build another camp, but “as usual the government backed out at the last minute”.
Adrian Dessaix, a contributor to the Burdekin Community Hub page, provided a calculation to show estimated water flow over the dam spillway is approximately 8,179 cubic meters per second.
