If it had been emptier, they'd have released less

Perhaps the Brisbane flood was man-made, after all, but not in the way Bob Brown claims:

MORE than 80 per cent of the flood in the Brisbane River at its peak last Thursday was the direct result of a critically urgent release from the Wivenhoe Dam of up to a third of its entire capacity.Data obtained by The Australian shows that, without that release, which peaked at an unprecedented rate of 645,000 megalitres a day, flooding in Brisbane would have been minimal.

Data from Wivenhoe Dam's owner and operator, the Queensland government-owned SEQWater, shows the peak flow in the Brisbane River when the river hit a height of 4.46m in the early hours of last Thursday was about 9000 cubic metres per second. Hydrologists and engineers said a release at a peak rate of 645,000ML a day would produce an estimated peak flow of almost 7500 cubic metres per second, leading to the conclusion that the flooding occurred because of the massive release from the dam.