Complaint over Paradise Dam defects as LNP cries ‘cover up’
A formal complaint has been made about Queensland’s defective Paradise Dam’s design.
A formal complaint has been made to the Board of Professional Engineers about the design of Queensland’s defective Paradise Dam after the state opposition dismissed a formal inquiry into safety issues as a “cover-up’’.
Prompted by several dam engineers, state opposition MPs have written to the professional body calling for an investigation into those behind the design and construction of the dam, near Bundaberg, which was opened in 2005.
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The $230m dam, one of the newest in Australia, began releasing 105,000ML of water into the drought-declared region in September — effectively halving its stored water levels — because of safety concerns.
Earlier this month, the Palaszczuk government announced a formal inquiry into the “root cause of structural and stability issues” with the 300,000ML dam after a series of reports by The Australian revealed major design and construction problems.
The state opposition has criticised the terms of reference of the inquiry, to be headed by former Supreme Court judge John Byrne, saying it is too restrictive to faults found after the dam was damaged in 2013 floods.
Several engineers, including Ken Pearce, a 30-year veteran of dam engineering in Queensland, have previously recommended the local community make a formal complaint to the Board of Engineers over the dam’s design problems and construction.
“There are serious problems with the design, particularly in the dissipater, which is critical to reducing the velocity of the water flow and ultimately to the safety of dam,’’ Mr Pearce said.
Three state Liberal National Party MPs have now made the complaint.
“As it currently stands, there has been a significant reduction in storage capacity at Paradise Dam, with millions of litres of water being released to the sea,’’ the complaint said.
“Given Paradise Dam was one of Australia’s first roller compacted concrete dams — involving the structure to be built with layers of compacted, dry concrete separated by a thin membrane — there are questions around why and how this process was approved and signed off by qualified engineers. The technical report conducted by GHD states core sampling of the dam in 2006 found there were bonding problems in 78 per cent of areas tested.
“Queensland taxpayers paid hundreds of millions of dollars for a dam which has only lasted just over a decade. Simply put, taxpayers haven’t got what they paid for.’’
Natural Resources Minister Anthony Lynham has insisted there were no restrictions placed on the ability of the inquiry to look at the cause of the structural problems The dam was built under the Beattie government by joint public-private “alliance” vehicle Burnett Water.
Its general manager, Graeme Newton, now heads the construction of the $5.4bn Cross River Rail project in Brisbane.
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