"Canberra News, Views and Opinion"
The Cotter Dam Expansion Dam Cam is showing the worst case scenario of flood waters rising over the under-construction wall as the capacity of the river diversion is comprehensively overwhelmed.
Let’s hope the raging torrent doesn’t undermine the wall or this will become a disaster of 2003 bushfires proportion.
We certainly hope that doesn’t happen, but it’s not like this was meant to happen either.
UPDATE 01/03/12 09:10: Thanks to dpm for pointing us at the above video compression of the overspill
[Photo by Androo]
UPDATE 02/03/12 8:18: And she’s still going very strong this morning:
UPDATE 02/03/12 09:31: This in from ACTEW supremo Mark Sullivan:
MarkS
2012/03/02 at 8:21 amThis morning observations are that the dam structure is sound. Heavy machinery has remained safe and cranes are fine. Have lost some forms and scaffolding and some light equipment. Biggest concern is the washing out of earthwork on the downstream side (looking at damcam it is on the left abutment or the right hand side looking at the dam). Possibly be a week before we get back on the dam and looks like a three week clean up. Flood is a one in one hunred year event so top marks to the engineers. Now we wait till tomorrows renewed assault.
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Thoroughly Smashed said :
I grant you that
Thumper said :
Not sure what you mean exactly? 1) You can’t control the weather and 2) for something that was/is half-built when this rain ‘event’ hit (I love it how the media have embraced the new ‘event’ terminology!), there don’t seem to be any issues that have been caused by human error in the building process. Not sure what more they could have done here…..?
dpm said :
Surely this rain was factored in the to project schedule?
I think we should leave it like this and just build a few more viewing platforms. We could be Australia’s version of Niagra Falls – we’ll make a motza from the honeymooners!
Nothing a few thousand besa bricks couldn’t fix.
Peekz said :
Defiantly not a troll account. I thought I would be smart and delete the bulk of the post and somehow ended up integrating the two. I will go back to watching from the sidelines.
If the dam was built already this would have filled it?
Mark Sullivan has tweeted this photo taken from the abutment above the new dam. You can’t see the tracks on the excavator in the bottom of the photo which makes the water, what, 1 metre deep?
Skidbladnir said :
The water table around my place has risen above ground level, so I have some minor flooding under my house. The same thing happened about 18 months ago, when we had a very wet weekend that was also a once in (some number of years) weather event.
Seems like these once in 40/80/100/whatever year rain events are becoming quite frequent.
I blame Tim Flannery for saying never again would we have our dams filled.
Peekz said :
I am positive that rain was factored into the project schedule as is with most major construction schedules – but I dont believe the data was there to be able to throw this amount of rainfall on BOM’s crystal ball…
IYou would reasonably expect a reduction in our water prices now, since we have had so much of it lately? I mean it was put up becuase we had so little of it before (and our water quality is so good). Fat chance I guess.
I suppose we have to boost ACTEWS profits back somehow somehow for being so responsible when there was a shortage of water (and I do think Canberrans in particular have done a great job in being responsible, with the odd exception – and have had restrictions longer than most other states)
Does anyone know what Lake George is looking like?
shauno said :
Tim Flannery said no such thing.
Please take care you don’t fall for fossil-fuel-industry-funded propaganda which is intended to “prevent science from being taught in the classrooms”, as recently leaked documents have revealed.
Deref said :
It looks wet, like any other lake.
When Lake George is empty, why isn’t it just called “George”?
HenryBG said :
Depends what you mean by “science”
dungfungus said :
Suddenly the interests of academia and industry lobbyists collide ans post-modernist thinking gets a new lease of life.
Science is science. And liars hate science, because science proves them wrong, hence the big anti-science PR-campaign that’s on at the moment.