Stakes higher than ever for SEQWater

VEXED questions over whether Queensland's Wivenhoe Dam was managed incompetently and in breach of the operating manual - and whether much of Brisbane's flooding was avoidable - largely revolve around the weekend of January 8-9 last year.

There is no dispute about whether huge releases from the dam on Tuesday, January 11 when it had reached alarming levels caused most of the inundation early Thursday morning throughout Brisbane, even causing the Bremer River to back up to Ipswich. Expert evidence at Queensland's Commission of Inquiry has stated this as fact.

But what is now a live, and far more serious, matter is a body of cogent, contemporaneous evidence from the flood event showing that on the weekend before the huge releases, the operator of the dam, SEQWater, was in the wrong water-release strategy. Judging by its interim report and the approach towards key witnesses in public hearings, the inquiry has inadvertently overlooked this evidence relating to the most crucial feature of the dam's operation on those two fateful days.

The inquiry accepted, without rigorous testing, testimony on face value from one of the flood engineers who stated that he initiated the correct strategy.

The difficulty with this claim, as The Australian's investigation shows, is that it is directly contradicted by numerous references in many documents that were produced during the flood event by SEQWater staff and senior public servants.

All of these documents are highly relevant because they were produced in real time or soon afterwards; they are not after-the-event justifications.

And, crucially, they do not show that SEQWater was running the right flood mitigation strategy on the weekend before the flood. To the contrary, they show that SEQWater was in the wrong strategy, W1, which has a primary consideration of minimising disruption to rural communities, instead of protecting urban areas.

The stakes now are higher than ever. If SEQWater cannot prove it was using the correct strategy, it is likely to incur the wrath and the damages bills of thousands of people who may have been unnecessarily flooded.

Nothing in the many documents examined by The Australian in its investigation is consistent with SEQWater having invoked the W3 strategy at 8am on January 8, and everything in those documents points to W3 - the protection of Brisbane from flooding - being delayed until the city's fate was sealed due to the dam filling up.

It is now incumbent on investigators reporting to commissioner Catherine Holmes, who leads the $15 million inquiry, to examine the body of contrary evidence, and then test whether the dam operator's claims that it was running the correct strategy on that weekend actually stacks up. The timing could not be worse. The inquiry is meant to hand down its final report in just four weeks, and Premier Anna Bligh is set to call a state election any day. But flooded victims deserve the whole truth.