Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

[c1ue]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Why is so little of this reported in the US media? I just checked Drudge and Yahoo front page and nothing.

Maybe because too much focus might dredge up too many skeletons...

As I alluded to earlier:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...ml#dsq-content

Summary:

1) Was AGW ideology inspired policy responsible for worsening the flooding via wholly inappropriate management of dam water levels? The Wivenhoe dam was kept at 100% capacity despite an incoming depression (which had already caused flooding elsewhere); once said depression (and rain) arrived, the dam was stressed to within a hair of failure and essentially passed through all subsequent water even as flood levels peaked.

2) Due to AGW beliefs, the Queensland government spent AU$13 billion on solar desalination plants as opposed to flood control - the latter recommended by a technical report as late as 2005

3) Thousands of homes, perhaps tens of thousands, were approved to build on historic flood plain due to the belief that Brisbane's future was one of drought.

All in all, a very suspicious picture.

Ever more alarming facts are emerging to show how Brisbane’s floods were made infinitely worse by cockeyed decisions inspired by the obsession of the Australian authorities with global warming. Inevitably, the country’s warmist lobby has been voluble in claiming that such a “freak weather event” (as the BBC called it) is a consequence of man-made climate change. But far from being an unprecedented “freak event”, the latest flood was nearly a foot below the level of one in 1974 and 10 feet below the record set in 1893.

For years, Australia’s warmists have been advising the authorities that the danger posed to the country by global warming is not floods but droughts: not too much rain but too little. One result, in Brisbane, was a relaxation of planning rules, to allow building on areas vulnerable to flooding in the past. As long ago as 1999, this was seen as potentially disastrous by an expert Brisbane River Flood Study (which was ignored and for years kept secret). Instead of investing in its flood defences, Australia spent $13 billion on desalination plants. (Queensland’s was recently mothballed because of the excess of rain.)

Last week’s most disturbing revelation, however, was the contribution to Brisbane’s flooding by the South East Queensland Water company’s massive release of water from its Wivenhoe dam upstream from the city (for details see “Brisbane’s Man-Made Flood Peak” on the Regionalstates blog). Instead of controlled releases through the previous week, the company allowed the level to rise to within a few inches of the top of the dam before releasing a vast volume of water, with devastating consequences for Brisbane 36 hours later.

Last spring, Queensland’s prime minister, the drought- and warming-obsessed Anna Bligh, ordered the water company not to allow any releases from the dam because water was such a “precious resource” that none must be wasted.

Unsurprisingly, on Friday, the city’s Lord Mayor asked for a full judicial review of what had happened. But it is time our Australian cousins carried out a very much more wide-ranging inquiry into all the other decisions made by their gullible politicians in recent years, under the spell of a pseudo-scientific ideology which now looks utterly discredited.

[thunderdownunder]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Yes you are correct -
The level of the flood mitigation dam (Wivenhoe) was at 125% on Sunday 9th. before the deluge.
By law them must fully release at 140% as it is the safe Design stress level for this earth fill dam.
It was not logical to hold at 125% when all could clearly see the Flooding weather was moving down toward our catchments (they started north of Rockhampton a week earlier and moved progressively down the coast.) Further the SOI was at a record high of +20 and we were entering the Cyclone season. What were they thinking????
I blame the "poverty effect" - for so long we had so little water it was rationed to level 4/5 that they simple "hoarded" above full supply levels.
The dam went to 196% and was weeping through the clay top level.(denied publicly to avoid panic)
Royal commission is now to be held.
You watch now they will probably release down to slightly below 100% as a 'mea culpa' but the damage is done - It is a war zone that requires tens of billions to be borrowed to fix the destruction. This has vast implications which will ripple through the World economy via commodity shortages.

[c1ue]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

The investigation into the Brisbane flooding continues, but in the meantime the operation of the Wivenhoe dam is looking worse and worse:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-d...-1225989885254

PREMIER Anna Bligh yesterday bowed to pressure to set up an inquiry with the powers of a royal commission, as the death toll from the flooding hit 20.

Fresh claims that 80 per cent of the Brisbane River flood, at its peak, was a direct result of the forced release of a huge volume of water from the city's main dam will be investigated by the judicial inquiry into the disaster in southeast Queensland.

The federal government has also refused to rule out any options for funding the multi-billion-dollar cost of reconstruction, including a national levy.

To be headed by veteran judge Cate Holmes, the inquiry will investigate whether enough was done to prevent the loss of life and massive property damage in Brisbane and communities to its west.
Central to the inquiry will be questions, raised by The Australian, of whether Wivenhoe Dam was mismanaged in the lead-up to the emergency that erupted last week with deadly flash flooding in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, and led to the worst flooding on record in Brisbane and neighbouring Ipswich.

More than 80 per cent of the flood in the Brisbane River at its peak last Thursday was the direct result of the release from Wivenhoe, the city's flood shield, of up to 30 per cent of its capacity, according to official data obtained by The Australian. The data shows that, without the unprecedented and massive release at a peak rate of 645,000 megalitres a day from the dam on Tuesday, January 11, the flooding in Brisbane would have been minimal.

The inquiry's terms of reference, released yesterday by Ms Bligh, call for scrutiny of the water release strategy for Wivenhoe and Somerset Dam further upriver, and their suitability for "flood mitigation and dam safety".

Data from Wivenhoe's registered owner and operator, the Queensland government-owned SEQWater, shows that the peak flow in the Brisbane River in the early hours of the flood last Thursday was about 9000 cubic metres per second. It takes about 36 hours for a release from the dam to reach the city gauge in Brisbane.
Hydrology and engineering experts said a release of a peak rate of 645,000 megalitres a day would produce a flow of almost 7500 cubic metres per second, although a number of factors, including river contours and the time it takes water to travel from the dam to the city gauge in Brisbane, mean the extrapolation is not precise.

However, they said it was clear that the flooding occurred because of the release from the dam.
The flooding Bremer River, which cuts through Ipswich and meets the Brisbane River to the west of the state's capital, was not nearly enough on its own to cause the devastating flooding of thousands of homes in Brisbane.

One of the most critical tasks for the commission will be to examine whether the operators at Wivenhoe Dam retained water in the dam's flood compartment for too long, forcing a drastic release that compounded the flood instead of mitigating it.

The commission of inquiry will also pore over the emergency response and the performance of private insurers after the flooding, and hand down interim findings on flood preparedness in August.

Mr Bligh has ordered Justice Holmes to deliver her final report by January 17 next year. If her government runs full term, as the Premier has promised, this will be in the lead-up to the state election, due by March next year.

In interviews yesterday, Ms Bligh stopped short of commending the operation of Wivenhoe ahead of the Brisbane flooding that inundated more than 17,000 homes and 65 suburbs, the CBD and central parts of Ipswich.

"I want to know that our dams work as they're supposed to and are operated as well as they technically can be," Ms Bligh said.

"I want to reassure the people of Brisbane that I want - just as much as they do - to know the answer to these questions. And I think they are very technical questions and that we need to get expertise from around Australia to really have a look at what happened, what could have been done differently so that we are well prepared should we ever see that sort of water coming into that catchment again. So these are very legitimate questions and I'm not going to shy away from them. I want to know the answers just as much as anybody else."

The development came as The Australian established that a flood levee was one option before the federal government as it grappled with funding the lion's share of the estimated $10bn-$20bn cost of rebuilding after the floods.

Last night, after Ms Bligh confirmed the 20th death of the southeast Queensland emergency, with another 12 people listed as missing, the Victorian town of Horsham, 300km northwest of Melbourne, was being evacuated ahead of a "once-in-200-year flood".

A federal levy to fund rebuilding could be modelled on surcharges imposed by the Howard government to pay for the gun buyback following the 1996 Port Arthur massacres and payouts to sacked Ansett staff after the collapse of the airline in 2001.

It would likely take the form of an addition to the 1.5 per cent Medicare levy, which currently raises about $10bn a year.

Julia Gillard indicated yesterday that the government's obligations to support Queensland would form part of the planning for the 2011-12 budget.

"There's going to be a lot of effort and money and resources needed to rebuild, particularly rebuild Queensland, but we'll be managing the federal budget . . . so that we can meet those needs as well as managing the budget into surplus in 2012-13," the Prime Minister said. Wayne Swan said yesterday the government was not yet ready to announce the form of commonwealth assistance but he confirmed it would be a significant burden on the budget.

A levy would likely be confined to paying for the rebuilding of infrastructure damaged in the flood, not assisting householders whose insurance policies had proven inadequate. The damage bill of up to $20bn is set to rise as emergencies continue to unfold across southern Queensland, in Victoria, and also in NSW, where flooding has hit the state's north and central districts. South Australia, northern Tasmania and the Carnarvon region of Western Australia have also been hit by flooding.

Announcing the inquiry, Ms Bligh said Justice Holmes had been empowered to comb over all aspects of the preparation and planning for the floods. "This commission of inquiry . . . is absolutely critical to us understanding firstly the community preparedness and the emergency response," she said. "We need to learn the lessons of this event so that we can protect ourselves better in the future. We need to honour those who have tragically lost their lives in this catastrophe and we need to do that by learning the lessons of the event."

Justice Holmes, a Supreme Court and Appeals Court judge of 10 years experience, who once represented mass killer Ivan Milat in private law practice, will be assisted by post-Fitzgerald inquiry Queensland police commissioner Jim O'Sullivan, and Phil Cummins, the chair of the international council on large dams.

The Australian yesterday revealed expert concerns that water releases held back in the week prior to the Toowoomba and Lockyer Valley deluge kept Wivenhoe Dam at dangerously high levels and worsened flooding in Brisbane. "In the aftermath of this event, people have legitimate questions and those questions, in my view, require a comprehensive and rigorous examination of all of the factors surrounding these events," Ms Bligh said. "In relation to the Wivenhoe Dam, it is legitimate to ask questions about the operation of that dam. Like so many other people in this city, I live here with my family, I have the same questions and want to make sure that we are getting absolutely thoroughly tested information in answering that question."
She said the assessment would also investigate whether other dams in the region could help mitigate floods in the future.

The Local Government Association of Queensland raised concerns last week that an inquiry could divert essential resources from the clean-up effort, but Ms Bligh said she had requested the commission to structure the hearings to allow vital work for small and medium councils to continue unimpeded.

[c1ue]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

The smoking gun?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-d...-1225991990957

LEAKED email communications from a Wivenhoe Dam engineering officer underline concerns that the Brisbane River flood was mostly caused by massive releases from the dam after it had held on to water too long over a crucial 72 hours before the severe rainfall that hit the region last week.

The emails, which become increasingly urgent in tone as the situation became critical as the dam's levels rise rapidly, were provided to The Australian by a source who said the stream of data had convinced him the river flood of Brisbane could have been largely avoided if the dam's operators had taken action much earlier.

A commission of inquiry will examine whether the dam's operators erred in permitting the dam's flood compartment to be severely limited for a major rainfall event because of their strategy to let the dam's levels rise over the weekend of January 8-9.

According to figures from Wivenhoe's operator, SEQWater, the dam's capacity went from 106 per cent full on the morning of Friday, January 7, to 148 per cent full on the morning of Monday, January 10, due to the limited weekend releases. Experts have said this severely compromised the dam's ability to store additional runoff.

By Monday morning the dam was at 100 per cent capacity for its supply of water for urban use, holding 1,150,000 megalitres. In addition its flood compartment, with a capacity of 1,450,000ML, was almost half full.

The dam reached about 190 per cent capacity by Tuesday, when its operators made huge and unprecedented releases to prevent the system from collapse.

The emails from engineering officer Graham Keegan, of SEQWater, which operates the Queensland government-owned dam, were sent to notify stakeholders about dam strategies, including release rates and likely impacts. Mr Keegan, who was receiving advice from the Flood Operations Centre at the dam, advises in an early email at 8.26pm on Saturday, January 8, that the releases of water that night were 1250 cubic metres per second (cumecs) and were to be kept to a "maximum of 1600" at mid-Brisbane River.

The same email notes awareness of the worsening weather: "Forecast for the next 4 days is for significant rainfall across SE QLD. Possible scenarios include a reduction in release rate to accommodate potential flooding in the Bremer River; however they also include larger releases from Wivenhoe Dam if heavy rainfall strikes our catchments. Releases may then extend to the week-end or later." By 8.30pm on Sunday, Mr Keegan's email alert advises the plan is to keep releases from the dam to 1400 cumecs "for the next 24 hours if possible".

"We may reduce the release as Lockyer Creek flooding increases," he says.
"However, please note that we are experiencing major flooding in our catchments. Inflows are approx 5000 cumecs in the upper-Brisbane river and 3000 cumecs in the Stanley River system, with rainfall continuing.

"The current BoM Severe Weather Warning predicts heavy rainfall until Tuesday. If these totals eventuate in the next 12 to 24 hours, higher releases from Wivenhoe Dam will be necessary. Fernvale and Mt Crosby Weir Bridges may be affected as early as Tuesday morning."

By 3.25am on Monday, the email alert advises: "We have experienced a rapid increase in river levels and inflow rates in the upper-Brisbane River . . . Increases in Wivenhoe Dam release rates began at 0200hrs this morning. Initial target is 2600 cumecs, and potential peak rate is 3500 cumecs. The release is now expected to continue until at least Sunday 16 (Jan)."

At 9.03pm on Monday, several hours after the severe rainfall in Toowoomba and across the Lockyer Valley, the email advised that the release rate was 2400 cumecs with a possibility of 2800 as operators sought to minimise urban flooding. By 2.42am on Tuesday the release rate was 2730 cumecs and the alert advised that the Flood Operations Centre and the Bureau of Meteorology were "still investigating the Lockyer Creek flash flood".

"If necessary (or possible) the release rate will be modified to moderate effects in the mid-Brisbane River zone," the email says.

Four hours later, with the water being let out of the dam at about the same rate, the email alert advised that the Upper Brisbane River had experienced another major flood and the possibility of reducing the Wivenhoe Dam release to accommodate the Lockyer Creek increase was "no longer an option".

"If the weather situation deteriorates further we may need to increase releases from the dam and the new target flow in the lower Brisbane River will rise to 5000 cumecs," it says. "We are entering conditions where dam safety overrides other concerns although minimisation of urban flooding remains very important."

At 9.50am on Tuesday, the email described the situation as having "moved into a critical phase as the lake is approaching our next trigger level".

At 7.43pm on Tuesday, the email alert advises that the dam's operators ratcheted up the release rate drastically to 6700 cumecs at 5.30pm, and would increase to 8000 cumecs at 8.30pm.

"This will match release rate with estimated inflow rate. On its own this release exceeds the peak flow rate of approx 7500 cumecs at Savage's Crossing during the 1974 flood," it says.

"Flood levels along the mid-Brisbane River can be expected to be significantly higher than that flood. Wivenhoe Dam is expected to reach a maximum level of 75.5m provided no further significant rainfall occurs. This is 0.1m below the trigger level for (an uncontrolled discharge). If this target is achieved, we may be able to slowly reduce the release rate overnight."

SEQWater has told The Australian that the peak of the flood in the Brisbane River in the city early on Thursday, January 13, was 9000 cumecs, about 36 hours after the Wivenhoe Dam release went to a peak flow of 8000 cumecs. It takes up to 36 hours for discharges from Wivenhoe to reach the city gauge.

A senior engineer independent of Wivenhoe Dam, Michael O'Brien, whose study of SEQWater and Bureau of Meteorology data at Wivenhoe have led him to conclude that the Brisbane flood should not have happened, said the details in more than 20 emails leaked yesterday had confirmed his view. "They were trying to keep country road crossings and low-level bridges open and may have forgotten that the big picture is the protection of Brisbane," he said.

SEQWater Grid chief executive Barry Dennien, who has praised the operators of the dam for having prevented what he said would have been a larger flood, has declined to answer The Australian's questions since Premier Anna Bligh called a commission of inquiry, tasked with investigating the dam's release strategies and if the flood was avoidable.

[thunderdownunder]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Thanks Clue - at least you have a Clue
Yes - So it starts, it would be a very dangerous thing to find SEQ Water complicit in "failing to act". The Class actions from all the thousands of Homeowners and Businesses would bankrupt the Queensland Government (SEQwater remains a semi government body).
The facts remain - a Blind monkey could have seen the 4 day forecast and realised that it would be prudent to release urgently. A blind monkey would have seen the Flooding rain to the North was coming down the coast. A blind monkey would have understood that being overcapacity in flood storage prior to a severe rain event was imprudent. This blind Monkey sent emails with attached BOM data reminding them (SEQW) of duty of care Friday, Sunday and Monday and I thought they were ignored. Maybe they were actually read by other monkeys who screeched but the monkey trainers ignored them. WHY - that's the easy question!
"The rules about the release of water are very strict," he said.
"They are mandated and cannot be played with, so it is my view the operators last week had little alternative other than to do what they did."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nati...-1225992598096
What a load of Crap. The people in charge failed in their duty of care because a 'mandate' restricted obvious but not obligatory action.
So next time I hear a Human desperately call out "Help me... Help Police" and I am not Police, what will I do?

Very telling this snippet from Clues post further up - "Last spring, Queensland’s prime minister, the drought- and warming-obsessed Anna Bligh, ordered the water company not to allow any releases from the dam because water was such a “precious resource” that none must be wasted."
WRONG - To Her it was a COMMODITY FOR SALE

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Why is so little of this reported in the US media? I just checked Drudge and Yahoo front page and nothing.

Have friends visiting from the states. They knew nothing about this.

(coverage from al jazeera's been good)

Thanks Downunder for the first hand notes.

[c1ue]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Over a year later, and indeed mismanagement was the reason the Brisbane flood was so severe.

A year in which the 'climate change means Australia drought' meme continues to be demolished.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nati...-1226264183962

TWO of the most senior water executives in Queensland have broken ranks by telling the floods commission of inquiry that at all times during the devastating floods in January last year, they were of the view that Wivenhoe Dam was run in a strategy subsequently shown to be wrong.
The new statements by Barry Dennien, chief executive of the Water Grid, and his deputy, Dan Spiller, contradict the earlier evidence of the dam's flood engineers who disown their emails, situation reports and other documents showing they were in the wrong strategy. The flood engineers say they were in the correct strategy, but that all their communications were wrong.

In new public hearings initiated after an investigation by The Australian exposed serious anomalies in the evidence, the flood engineers have been repeatedly accused by Peter Callaghan SC, senior counsel assisting the inquiry, of breaching the dam's manual, concocting a cover-up and falsifying the contents of a comprehensive SEQWater report released in March last year.

The March report became a crucial exhibit for the inquiry as well as the template for independent experts to rely on to give SEQWater the seal of approval for its performance in the flood. The flood engineers have strenuously denied they breached the manual and orchestrated a cover-up.

The Bligh government said last night it had been advised by SEQWater that two of its flood engineers were no longer available for dam operations. The engineers were not named.
Asked about the major change in the timing of the dam strategy in the March report, compared with SEQWater's January 2011 documents that went to Premier Anna Bligh and her cabinet, Mr Dennien said: "I cannot comment on why these differences between the reports exist."

He said he "did not have any input" into SEQWater's March report and that he did not recall reading it "other than perhaps glancing through it".

Mr Spiller said he was led to believe from all the communications he received last year that the dam stayed in strategy W1, which has a primary consideration of minimising disruption to rural communities, until the evening of Sunday, January 9. The following day he clarified this with dam operations manager Rob Drury "and in a subsequent teleconference that morning in which he and Mr Peter Borrows, the chief executive of SEQWater, were involved".
Mr Spiller said he was "not involved in any discussions, correspondence, meetings or briefings in relation to the March SEQWater report".

"I first became aware of the differences between the January SEQWater report and the March SEQWater report on 25 January, 2012, when it was highlighted by an article in The Australian, titled 'Dam bursts on new evidence'."
Mr Dennien has revealed the existence of a recording of a critical meeting of SEQWater executives, local government heads, the then Bligh government minister for natural resources, Stephen Robertson, and the then head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Ken Smith.

Mr Dennien said the teleconference at 12.30pm on Monday, January 10, last year was recorded by Scott Denner, director of risk and technology of the WaterGrid manager, to produce minutes, but "no formal minutes were subsequently recorded".

The recording was made the day before flood engineers were forced to make massive releases of water that flooded thousands of properties and caused a backflow that submerged large areas of Ipswich. The releases at twice the flow that causes damage to Brisbane became imperative because the dam's structural integrity was at risk as it had almost run out of storage space.

The Australian last month revealed that Mr Spiller, Mr Dennien and Mr Smith received and sent emails in January last year in which it was clear the dam was managed under the W1 strategy. But this was a grave error, as the rise in the water level in Wivenhoe Dam should have triggered the strategy known as W3 -- which has a primary aim of protecting urban areas from flooding -- at 8am on Saturday, January 8.

The reports led to the inquiry, which was close to sending its final report to the printers, reconvening for public hearings in which the flood engineers have been accused of lying and fabricating an official SEQWater report afterwards to give a false and misleading impression that they followed the dam's manual to the letter.

Mr Dennien said in his new statement that his "understanding of the strategies adopted and their timing" was that the engineers had remained in W1 until the evening of Sunday, January 9. This directly contradicts the evidence of the engineers, who insist they changed strategy at 8am on January 8.

Mr Dennien said his view at the time and now was informed by the technical situation reports he had been sent during the flood. He said he understood the flood operation strategy on the morning of Monday, January 10, was W2.
This is another direct contradiction of the evidence of the flood engineers, who said they bypassed W2.

Mr Dennien said he understood "the transition from strategy W2 to strategy W3 occurred sometime later in the day on 10 January, 2011".

This was more than 48 hours after the engineers claimed it had occurred, and raises questions about how much of the flooding of Brisbane and surrounding areas was avoidable.
Mr Spiller said: "The transition from strategy W1 to strategy W2 occurred on the evening of Sunday, 9 January, 2011."

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Is Your Car Non-Recourse Mate, Because I Believe It's Underwater!

Thanks for the update. I suspect there's more behind the QLD floods than dam operator incompetence, a ten year drought, and AGW politics. Decisions about releasing water and holding it back almost always involve money, as DownUnder's phrase “commodity for sale” implies.

In Thailand, reservoirs are kept topped up to provide water in the dry season. It hasn't rained for months but water is still gushing along ditches through fields. The second rice crop depends completely on irrigation.

Last spring the rains started way early and never stopped. Reservoirs were already full in May. Many people called for early releases of water to mitigate almost certain flooding in September, Thailand's wettest month. Didn't happen.