Rocky Council: ‘Old project was pre-climate change. We’re in climate change now’

The risk of sea water breaching Rockhampton’s water supply has gone to a new level of urgency at the Regional Council.

The Fitzroy River Barrage in Rockhampton.

The risk of sea water breaching the Fitzroy River Barrage storage has gone to a new level at Rockhampton Regional Council.

Senior council officers advised councillors at a June meeting that a previous barrage raising project focused on increasing water security was being replaced by one that will now concentrate on the risks of climate change on the city’s water supply.

They said the old project, which had commenced in 2017, had looked at raising the barrage “arbitrarily” by half a metre to provide more water storage (10,000ML) and improving security during drought periods.

Flood water flows through the Fitzroy River Barrage into Rockhampton in April, 2017. RACQ Capricorn Helicopter Rescue.

A smaller section of that investigation had been the threat of higher sea levels, but that issue is now a key focus.

“We now see that old project was pre-climate change,” the officer said.

“We’re in climate change now. So we’re assessing the risk of not elevating (the barrage) and raised sea levels. The old project to arbitrarily raise is history. It was beaten by time.

“We’ve got a new project with resilience disaster funding from the Queensland Reconstruction Authority to work out the risks (of not raising it) and what height should that be. Maybe it’s one metre? We don’t know the answer to that.

“Then once we know the risk, we will then turn it back into a project of raising it under the QRA disaster funding.”

In 2019, Rockhampton Regional Council reported the storage capacity of the barrage could be increased by almost 10,000 ML with “relatively minor” changes to the barrage gates and parts of the structure allowing water to be stored at 0.5m above the current operating level. The changes were then expected to cost between $500,000 and $1 million.

Paul Price took this shot of the Fitzroy River Barrage.

A senior Fitzroy River Water officer said in the 2019 report that “in addition to increasing our storage volume, the raising of the barrage gate height will also reduce the chance of future sea level rise leading to the estuary water overtopping the gates at high tide and causing estuary water to enter the upstream freshwater, something that is almost certain to happen in the coming years given the predicted rises in sea level – so another way in which we will increase the security of our valuable water supply”.

Construction work on The Fitzroy River Barrage in the late 1960s before it opened in 1970. Photo Contributed

Rockhampton Regional Council holds a 50,383ML high reliability allocation within the Barrage storage of 74,400ML. Each year Council uses approximately half of this allocation for the supply of drinking water or for the supply of untreated irrigation water to more than 300 rural users located upstream of the Barrage storage.

Originally published as Rocky Council: ‘Old project was pre-climate change. We’re in climate change now’