An initial environmental assessment of water infrastructure options in the Burdekin Catchment

[Extract] The Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research (ACTFR) has been commissioned by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Regional Infrastructure Development Program, North Region, to provide an environmental evaluation of prospective dam sites located within the Burdekin Catchment. This report is a scoping study that utilises existing data to determine the significant environmental issues for each development option and evaluate their potential impacts. Quantification of the extent of each potential impact will be required for those options that progress to more advanced stages of development. A scoping study of dam options for the Burdekin Catchment was undertaken in 1998 (DNR 1998) with input into environmental issues supplied by ACTFR (Burrows et al. 1998). This was a desktop study which considered ~50 water infrastructure development options with a view to reducing that number of options. From that study, eight dam sites remained in consideration. The original environmental scoping study considered a large number of options, with the extent of the evaluation being relatively limited (eg, no fieldwork). This was suitable for the purpose of identifying possible environmental issues and reducing the number of options to the current eight. It was however, insufficient for further discrimination between the remaining sites, and because of the limited depth of evaluation, it was considered that more detailed assessment was required. In addition, much additional vegetation mapping has occurred since 1998, particularly in relation to regional ecosystems. These options are evaluated in this report, through stakeholder consultation, consideration and review by a Technical Advisory Panel and analysis through a Multiple Objective Decision Support System (MODSS).