This morning’s Lismore Council meeting saw a protest outside from Dam Free Nimbin and heard evidence inside that the proposals for massive flood retention dams designed to protect the Lismore CBD are already causing negative impacts on people upstream.
Before the debate on Cr Virginia Waters’ motion regarding the flood management committee and the CSIRO’s proposed ‘retention basins’, Jacqui Smith on behalf of Nimbin Hills Real Estate said she was concerned that many people to whom they have sold homes and farms would now be adversely affected by the proposed dams.
She asked how the dams would affect roads – will food and medical supplies still be able to get to towns such as Nimbin?
Ms Smith also asked about compensation for affected landholders, for what could become unsaleable land.
How will the country respond to being underwater for weeks? What about the environmental issues of petrol stations going under water? Could the amount of water in ten dams be released without generating land slips?
Another speaker, Sharon Whaley, also from Nimbin, says she bought her land as it was flood free but it would go underwater if the dam proposals were built. She spoke about the work she and her her partner have done to make their home sustainable through flood and drought.
Ms Whaley said that including the dams in the Flood Risk Management Plan before the feasibility study has been completed was neither morally or ethically justifiable.
An engineer’s perspective
Engineer and Richmond Tinnie Man Steve Posselt told Lismore councillors, ‘I am a fellow of Engineers Australia. Our code of ethics forbids us to practise outside our area of expertise and I don’t.
‘My qualifications for Bachelor of Engineering are for Civil and Structural, however I spent thirty years in areas that are often classified as mechanical, because it was in mechanical equipment for water and sewage. My specialty, the area where there were very few engineers practising at the time, was in water control gates.
‘As you know, the Tinnie Men have compiled comments on the CSIRO Flood Study. The comments demonstrate that the flood detention basins would be classified as dams and subject to Australian National Committee on Large Dams (ANCOLD) protocols.
‘They also show why the control gates proposed are not feasible. The detention times nominated by CSIRO are shown to be dangerously impractical due to the high probability of rapid draw down failure, leading to landslip.
‘I have seen some comments mocking me but not the substance of what we have had to say. I therefore ask that if anyone can find any errors of engineering in our commentary to please let me know. Perhaps Council would like to ask its engineering team to find any errors. Perhaps you would like to engage an independent consulting engineering company that council uses, to check our commentary,’ said Mr Posselt
‘I am always available for anyone to ask a question as I know this is not in the area of expertise of any councillors, but it has been my bread and butter.’
False hope
‘People of Lismore, Coraki, Woodburn and Broadwater, to name just some locations, are still traumatised from 2022. They should not be given false hope.
‘People in the valleys are now being victimised and will continue to be for another two years until the $3M is spent, and the feasibility is completed. This is simply not fair.’
Steve Posselt closed with the words of a member of the Mary River Catchment Coordinating Committee, about another dam proposal that caused havoc in the local community: ‘In 2006 the Traveston Crossing Dam was announced. While this dam was never built, we experienced first-hand the destruction of the close knit social fabric of the Mary Valley.
‘The anxiety was palpable for three years while the buy-up and planning was ongoing. Families moved away, businesses shut down and uncertainty prevailed.’
Cr Big Rob’s response to all this was to say that Mr Posselt conducting ‘a scare campaign’.
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