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| New flood modelling by Maurice Blackburn / IMF (Australia) |
DAM operators should have been on an emergency footing, making significant dam releases in December 2010, but instead negligently flooded entire suburbs in a panic the following month, lawyers claim.
The law firm taking on the State Government yesterday said Chelmer, Rosalie, Auchenflower, Bulimba and the entire CBD of Ipswich were among areas that should not have flooded at all in January 2011.
The firm plans to file a complaint by April, although it has not yet established in which court.
Maurice Blackburn principal solicitor Damian Scattini said his firm and the company financing the action, IMF, were convinced there had been significant negligence before and during the floods.
Mr Scattini said the dam operators had held back too much water for too long in what appeared to have been "a misguided attempt" to keep upstream bridges open.
"When they realised what they'd done they panicked and released too much at once, so we had a much larger peak than there needed to be," he said.
"Their priorities were skew-whiff."
Mr Scattini said that under dam operator Seqwater's own rules, there was a flood emergency throughout December 2010 and the first week of January 2011.
But a flood event was not declared until January 6.
"Their own rules say if the dam is at 67m and there is more rain expected then they should declare a flood emergency," he said.
"There was not a single day in December that those conditions did not apply.
"On the second of January they said the flood was over. Then they come back on the sixth of January and keep the gates closed."
Mr Scattini said US hydrologists hired as expert witnesses had found the operators were negligent deliberately in ignoring weather forecasts.
They had also "observed" that the current version of the manual used to operate the dams "had been written to cover up what they did in 2011", he said.
But he refused to name the experts and would not reveal any of their findings in detail.
Flood victims and other Brisbane residents were yesterday poring over a map released by Maurice Blackburn that shows in green areas that it claims should not have flooded.
Areas that would have received at least 150mm (6 inches) of water regardless of how the dam was managed are marked in orange.
Some complained online that locations that did not flood were nevertheless marked green. Mr Scattini blamed state government flood maps, used to delineate the flooded areas, for the errors.
"We thought, they can hardly complain if we use their basis for the map," he said.
He said more accurate maps would be used in court.
John Walker, of litigation funding firm IMF, which is risking up to $10 million in the expectation of a big government payout, said lawyers were on track to file a complaint by April.
Mr Walker said the claim, which would be the largest class action in Australia, could potentially exceed $1 billion.
He said he hoped to get insurance companies to join the action, describing them as also having been "victims" of the dam operator's negligence.
Maurice Blackburn and IMF will spend the next two months sending leaflets throughout the suburbs, identified as having been avoidably flooded in the hope of garnering further support for their action.
Public meetings will be held in these areas in the next few weeks.
A spokesman for Seqwater said the company was "acutely aware of the impact of the floods" but rejected claims of negligence.
"We've always been confident that Wivenhoe Dam was managed as it was supposed to be managed, and the dam performed as it was designed to perform during the range of flood events from October 2010 into January 2011," the spokesman said.
"Seqwater remains acutely aware of the impact of the floods and the devastation caused and acknowledges that there are households and businesses which continue to be impacted.
"The January 2011 flood event was the largest flood in southeast Queensland for more than 100 years and was the result of an extreme rainfall event both above and below Wivenhoe Dam.
"Our region effectively had two 1974 floods hit our dams and catchments, less than 30 hours apart.
"Seqwater remains confident that Wivenhoe Dam was managed and performed as it was designed.
"Our approach has been vindicated by a range of independent experts including one of the world's leading dam authorities, the United States Bureau of Reclamation and United States Army Corps of Engineers."
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