AN OBSERVATION OF THE CONFLUENCE OF STATISTICAL ABERRATIONS, DAM RATIOS, TIMING AND UNCOMMON RAINFALL EVENTS THAT COMBINED TO HAVE OUR LEADERS DRAW INCORRECT CONCLUSIONS. THEIR INFLUENCE ON ACTIONS TAKEN.

Author : J. V. Hodgkinson F. C. A. Chartered Accountant : Aug 2006 to April 2013    

The principal thrust of this website is
FLOOD PROOFING BRISBANE from damaging floods to the point of extinction. MITIGATING flooding in Ipswich and Gympie. Putting REAL MEANING into "Drought proofing SEQ" and ensuring our water supplies by natural means well into the future

This is my review based on official statistics and documents. It is done in conjunction with Ron McMah, grazier of Imbil and Trevor Herse, retired of the Gold Coast

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Advice offered to Deputy Premier Bligh and the relevant Minister Hinchcliffe

I offered the following advice to these Ministers. It was not prophetic. It was not climate change. It was straightforward mathematics.

The following is an extract from my letter to Hon. Mr S. Hinchcliffe, the then Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, sent on the 23rd April 2009 three weeks before the May 2009 "uncommon event".  The alert to the Minister followed a meeting with him in January 2009. The meeting had the support of the senior policy advisor to the PM (Kevin Rudd).

"The way I see it, the difficulty for you and all who support the Traveston is that on the mathematical certainty of the return of the “uncommon events” the dams will overflow. That by itself should have people in SEQ questioning if those in charge understand what they are doing. Historically there has been 11 “uncommon events” within 1 year of each other (April 1988 & April 1989 for example) and there will be a tremendous loss of water over spillways with full dams. In my view justification of the Traveston will be under severe stress and storage in the Borumba Dam together with its additional yield, vindicated."  

The following is an extract from my letter to Premier Anna Bligh on the 18th January 2008 when dealing with the Traveston Dam project.

 “Uncommon events” proved to be the lifeblood of SEQ from 1986 to 2001, filling the Dams to overflow four times and covering expanding population requirements with ease. Although the official records disclose there was an absence of “uncommon events” between 1974 and 1988, there were five such events in the short life of the Wivenhoe Dam (1988 to 1999 and a topup in Feb.2001). A high proportion of those events flowed over the spillway and were lost because of lack of storage.

They will return. When the uncommon events return, we will not have sufficient storage space to retain the surplus water from them, except for the first one. Most of that water from uncommon events would now be lost whereas they were our main provider for the 16 years to 2001.

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