Fancy, a dam turns out useful in a flood

The newest dam in Australia has been built just in time for the massive flood-causing rains that former Premier Peter Beattie three years ago feared had been dried up by global warming:

Australia's newest dam, conceived in a record dry spell, is now starting to fill with flooding rains.

Small lakes have begun to pool in the 130,000ML Wyaralong dam, about 90km southwest of Brisbane, spurred on by the highest rainfall the region has experienced in a decade.

The $348 million dam was announced at the peak of southeast Queensland's drought crisis in 2005 and built this year at a rate Queensland Infrastructure Minister Stirling Hinchliffe described as "nothing short of amazing".

The pipe diverting Teviot Brook away from the dam was plugged on Friday, allowing the water to begin accumulating up the 45m high wall.

Wyaralong dam will be the region's fifth-largest dam, the first in a generation, and is connected to southeast Queensland's new $6.9 billion water grid. The grid, an interconnected network of dams, water recycling plants, and the $1.2bn Tugun desalination plant, is capable of supplying 58ML a day to residents. The desalination plant—which can be brought to full operation of 138ML a day within 72 hours—was mothballed because consistent rainfall makes it unnecessary at this stage, while the Beattie government's planned Traveston "megadam" was scuttled last year on environmental grounds.

That was the story 10 days ago. Every day, the dam fills higher, and Victoria must now wonder why its own Labor Government refused to build a cheap dam, too, opting instead for a $5.7 billion desalination plant to deliver a third of the water on the grounds that global warming was - yes - drying up the rains:

Unfortunately, we cannot rely on this kind of rainfall like we used to...

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