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| Was the 2011 flood avoidable? |
IN the two years since Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam made huge releases of water that flooded tens of thousands of properties, victims have suffered an excruciating wait for justice. When their homes and businesses went under, they received the usual promises from politicians that no stone would be left unturned to get to the bottom of the disaster.
Since then, we have seen a year-long $15 million commission of inquiry, which produced scathing findings 10 months ago about the conduct of the dam's engineers who breached the operating manual. We have endured a flood-driven downturn in the Queensland economy, more political platitudes, a change of government, and a ruling by the state's Crime and Misconduct Commission that the dam's engineers, who have strenuously denied wrongdoing, should not be prosecuted.
Now, as some victims wait to rebuild and many cannot see how they will ever recover enormous losses, the Newman government has a severe case of compassion-and-budget fatigue. The victims are no longer a high priority for the Liberal National Party as it strives to improve the economy; the flooded are a costly problem.
Premier Campbell Newman, a civil engineer who knows how dams are meant to operate, even gagged himself and his ministers for much of last year about the contribution of the state-owned dam to Queensland's worst disaster. Instead of showing leadership to flood victims, the government, SEQWater and its new head are having their strings pulled by the dam's faceless insurers.
This strategy - born of the fact that the state faces a multi-billion-dollar hit in compensation claims for negligence (only some of which would be covered by the dam's syndicate of insurers, including QBE) - was doomed to fail as soon as opposing lawyers obtained the evidence they needed to bring on Australia's largest class action.
Yesterday, lawyers for class action specialists Maurice Blackburn and their funders, IMF Australia, drove a crucial stake in the ground for the flood victims - confirmation that a legal action for negligence in the dam's operation is highly likely to be run.
Damian Scattini, a principal of Maurice Blackburn, and John Walker, head of the stock exchange-listed IMF, claimed they had rock-solid findings from independent overseas experts who had determined that much of the flooding should not have happened. If the dam had been operated prudently - if basic requirements such as forecast rainfall had been taken into account - the experts allege this massive structure would have done its job. As Walker claimed: "The reality is that, for many, this is a flood that didn't need to happen."
As investigations by The Australian over the past two years showed, the lawyers' experts are confidently declaring that the dam was not operated prudently. It was permitted to store high volumes of water even as heavy rainfall was falling and being forecast to keep falling. And then as the fast-rising levels threatened the dam's structural integrity, the engineers realised they had no option but to suddenly make the huge releases that flooded the city and surrounding suburbs.
A powerful graphic released by the lawyers yesterday depicts entire suburbs that they say should never have been inundated.
Three of the four dam engineers were found by the commission of inquiry's head, Supreme Court judge Catherine Holmes, to have engaged in a cover-up, and that the dam's operating manual was breached at a crucial stage. Three engineers, all of whom have repeatedly declared they did not do anything wrong, faced a possible criminal prosecution for alleged offences until a legal opinion sought from a former judge by the CMC fell in their favour.
What is important now is that IMF and Maurice Blackburn are preparing to go to court. To date they have stumped up more than $1m to investigate whether such a case would be worth pursuing. Now that the results of the hydrodynamic reconstruction of the flood are in with a precision that drills down to every 10sq m of flood-affected terrain, the lawyers are looking at spending more than $10m to ensure this case gets to court.
Worryingly, as Walker said yesterday, the experts remain concerned that the dam's new operating procedures were revised after the flood to justify the poor operation of the 2011 event. Queenslanders are no safer now despite all of the pledges, damage and public cost - and for this reason alone, a court case to protect the population from future floods is essential.
22.1.13
