Damned Paradise to Puddle - Qld's Great Water Debacle

Wayne Mulvany

The Watchman

The issues with Paradise Dam ( located just outside of Bundaberg) or, as it is rapidly becoming known, Paradise Puddle are simple. The dam wall has not been constructed sufficiently and strong enough to be safe. 

Why and how is still being argued over, but we need to get it fixed. However, the proposed responses around possible remedies to the situation are now verging on the ridiculous. As well as being extremely costly, they are totally overworked, overwrought with political pushing and shoving, and are offering no real end to this long-running saga.

Now, I’m not an engineer, but I have project managed two major construction builds and I also rub shoulders with people who are highly experienced in this area.

So I would like to propose a simple solution that will solve the Paradise Dam issue once and for all.

Simply leave the water level at its current depth, don’t fix or do anything to the dam wall, and build a brand new wall further down the ravine to the same height. This new wall needs to be engineered and constructed properly.

When the new wall is completed, simply release the water shored up behind the old wall and fill up the canal area between the two. Thus the old dam wall would sit within a safe water pressured area.

You could potentially demolish the existing wall and let the remains settle on the bottom of the dam, but why bother? You could just as well leave it there, because its stability (or lack thereof) would be of no account. If it collapses, it would have little to no impact on the dam and its operations. In fact, it could be a nice little spot for the local turtles to hang out.

Certainly, there would not be any impact on the people living downstream who have been forced to live with this fearful burden of an unstable dam for too many years.

Result: No loss of the valuable water contained in the dam, which our farmers so desperately need, and a safe environment for everyone. Including the turtles.

See, I told you it was simple. No highfalutin, pretentious and expensive to-ing and fro-ing. Just build it again further downstream, and make the old wall obsolete.

That will see us out of this Paradise Puddle muddle for good.

Wayne Mulvany is General Manager of IWC Limited and has project managed Stages 1 and 2 of the IWC Health & Wellbeing Complex construction.