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| Peter Borrows CEO of Seqwater which has now entered a political and legal storm with its ill-timed media statement. |
Seqwater has been at the centre of a political and legal storm since the great Brisbane River flood of January 2011 which destroyed thousands of homes and businesses in Ipswich and Brisbane.
The Floods Commission of Inquiry under the brilliant stewardship of Supreme Court Judge Cate Holmes reported on 16 March 2012:
"There are several things that may have motivated the three engineers to present the false flood report, including a wish to protect their professional reputations from the damage that would be caused by a disregard of the manual, of the maintenance of Seqwater's immunity (from damages payouts).
"It follows that Wivenhoe Dam was operated in breach of the manual from 8am on 8 January 2011 until the evening of 9 January 2011."
This is a clear, unequivocal finding by the Commission which has not been overturned by either the subsequent CMC investigation or the hog-tied findings of the US Army Corps of Engineers.
To add insult to the injury of thousands of flood victims, Seqwater issued its own ill-timed media release on 26 September 2012 which read in part:
"Seqwater has always taken the view that the operation of Wivenhoe Dam during the January 2011 flood event and the release strategies adopted by its engineers significantly mitigated the flood. The independent expert retained by the Commission, concluded that, in light of the information available at the time and allowing for the limits of the strategies in the Wivenhoe manual, the flood engineers achieved close to the best possible flood mitigation result for the January event.
Furthermore, four other highly respected independent experts who appeared at the Commission support Seqwater's view that releases actually made by the flood engineers were appropriate and reasonable.
Seqwater is confident that its position will be justified if the matter ever comes before a court."
With a class action pending against the Queensland Government and Seqwater, this is an extraordinary leap by Seqwater propelling itself into the political and legal quagmire which has engulfed the state for the past 20 months.
Seqwater's CEO Peter Borrows is a highly-respected and highly-qualified engineer whose professional integrity and engineering skills are well-known. But when it comes to embroiling Seqwater into the murky political and legal waters ahead, Peter Borrows should tread warily.
Highly selective use of Floods Inquiry evidence - while disregarding its key findings - is not conducive to the level of professionalism expected of Seqwater.
It is to be hoped that Seqwater leaves the public debate on the 2011 flood to the public and politicians and whether or not it acted negligently in the lead-up to the flood, to the courts.
It is not appropriate for Seqwater to continue to engage in selective self-serving public debate to justify its actions in January 2011.
Seqwater's website states:
"We hope the Seqwater web site provides you with a greater understanding of the significant challenges we face as well as the many innovative solutions and collaborative approaches we are developing to deliver long-term water security for South East Queensland."
CEO Peter Borrows has a duty to stop these public shenanigans and get on with Seqwater's job of managing our dams in southeast Queensland.
With the stance now taken by the State Government, it seems the legal issues in this matter will be determined in the Supreme Court of Queensland - where the negligence or otherwise of Seqwater will be decided by our legal system and not via media releases, ill-timed public utterances and extraordinary self-justifications.
27.9.12
