Government blasts its own report | Gympie News | Local News in Gympie

SUSTAINABILITY Minister Andrew McNamara has blasted his own department, the Environmental Protection Agency, for raising major concerns about the proposed Traveston Crossing dam, which it said would cause the Mary River to run dry.

But anti-dam activists say the Minister is misquoting his own government's data.

"The EPA guy is absolutely right and Mr McNamara must have failed to read the Environmental Impact Statement if he says otherwise," Save the Mary River Group president Kevin Ingersole said yesterday.

Mr McNamara this week apologised to Mayor Ron Dyne over what he described as "incorrect information" sent to Gympie Regional Council from the Environmental Protection Agency, particularly the regional council regarding the Traveston Crossing Dam.

He and Mr Ingersole were responding to this week's exclusive report in The Gympie Times on EPA claims that council would have to replan its sewage disposal arrangements to deal with dam impacts, including periods of "zero flow."

That admission created a furore among downstream irrigators and fishing and tourist interests in Mr McNamara's Hervey Bay electorate, after council Works Committee chairman Larry Friske said this would mean environmental, social and economic disaster downstream.

And he said the new sewage disposal requirements would send council broke.

"As part of the Environmental Protection Agency's assessment of an application for expansion of the Gympie Regional Council sewage treatment plant, the council was asked to model for "zero flows of the Mary River as a result of the Traveston Dam," Mr McNamara said.

"We are reviewing how this clearly incorrect data came to be included in the letter, but that doesn't change the fact that it is clearly incorrect," Mr McNamara said.

"It goes against all rigorous scientific analysis of the Traveston Crossing Dam. It's a mistake, pure and simple and that is as far as I will take it."

He said the EIS showed the dam's impact on flows at the mouth of the Mary River would be three to four per cent. However, Mr Ingersole said the only mistake was Mr McNamara's misreading of the scientific analysis in the dam's Environmental Impact Statement and his apparently inability to interpret statistics accurately.

"The EPA guy got it right and the proof is in the EIS," Mr Ingersole said yesterday.

"The politicians must be looking in the wrong place." He accused Mr McNamara is a misleading interpretation of statistics. "If you and I were in a golf club and one of the 100 members was James Packer, they might say our average worth is $10 million each, but that would not be telling the real story.

"The Mary River goes for years and years with pathetically low flows and then once in every so many years you get a horrendous flood.

"The average is a joke. It's mishandling the truth and the government knows that."

He said that on the dam's EIS, average flow would be less than 50 per cent of the natural state. Mr McNamara said "almost 80 per cent of the Mary River catchment is downstrream of the dam, with tributaries that would ensure healthy flows."