so this interglacial period we are in right now is now called climate change but climate change is supposed to be man-made so who started the integration period seeing no man was around in 130 000 BC I need clarification because you must be big smart and me Mia midwit. ??
Another set of consultants will come in and clean up with an assessment of root cause analysis, recommendations, etc. They’ll employ more PR teams and spend large amounts on sham community consultations. Everyone wins except the taxpayer. We have a satire program in Australia called Utopia set in a fictional government works department. Depressingly it is very accurate.
Of course not, can’t hold the politicians and construction company responsible right, how were they to know the shoddy construction would cause problems
What about the Commission of Inquiry Report (COIR) from 2022? If you knew anything about RCC dam construction and governance processes for major State Government infrastructure projects and you read the Commission of Inquiry Report you would know that this project was destined to be a failure PRIOR to the acceptance of the Consortium which constructed the dam. The truth of this major engineering failure (costing $1B+) has never been publicly exposed. The reasons for this failure (which can easily happen again with the new replacement dam) are a combination of the following decisions: previous Queensland Premiers including Bettie were responsible for outsourcing dam design and construction to the private sector, creating a company in the first instance to own the dam but who knew nothing about dam ownership, selecting a consortium which used a dam design that had never been constructed on this scale in Australia, no rigorous testing of the RCC was undertaken, there was no site supervision of the work to ensure it was carried out according to the contract conditions, there were only two South African engineers who had any experience with constructing a dam of this type while the dam was being constructed around the clock and finally the COIR showed that many contractural conditions were never followed (the dam was designed by an American engineer). In other words the COIR was a white wash (because of the terms on the inquiry and the Commission's inability to understand these issues) and to date no person or company has ever been made accountable for this disaster. Finally, as far as I know, the location of the new dam being 70m downstream of the original dam must also address poor foundation conditions.
This channel is good until they do videos on stuff you have a tiny bit of knowledge on or do a quick google search on. Countless errors/ommisson of basic context etc. I recall one re tunnel boring machines on a London underground project & the number they quoted just didn't seem right, literally took 60 seconds to google, come across an official report on the government website & get the true figures with much more info. Literally info anyone doing research on would find in seconds. Also a lot of the videos are literally built/edited around sponsors who also worked on the project. Still a decent channel, but could be better imo...that's all.
This consortium model Australia and so many others seem to adore has to go away. Minimizing taxpayer costs in the near term shifts all of the risk on to taxpayers for the life of the project and ultimately costs so much more.
So the original plan was to strengthen the plasticine using chickpeas, but in a surprise turn, it transpires that tinned chickpeas don't have the same strength as fresh ones. Now question on my mind is, are they leaving enough space for the third dam?
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I’m in Sydney - in an assessment centre a month back, I had to work with this one guy who just refused to build our mini-bridge to specification, who kept going “trust me bro” even though the bridge (his design) clearly didn’t fit specifications. If he gets hired, then god help the engineering industry in Australia.
It seems to be a recent phenomenon. Plenty of major infrastructure was built in the past without issues like this. I suspect that this failure, like some recent high-rise apartment building failures, was the result of building to a price instead of engineering things for safety.
Make sure you are sitting down if you ever talk to a Bundaberg farmer about this topic.. The management of this project by the Queensland government was an absolute disgrace. Thank you Fred for covering a topic that not many people know about.
You are so right. We live in Bundaberg and know some of the contractors. The dam design was based on a laminated technique that was used in a failed Italian dam. The QLD govt thought that tweaks to the design would make the dam safe. They couldn’t get an Aussie engineering firm to sign off on the dam construction so they used a USA firm, who disbanded a couple of months after they signed off on the dam, so there is no-one to sue. The contractors built the dam to specs but they had grave doubts on the dam’s soundness from day 1. Typical Labor party stuff up, wasting billions of taxpayers money.
It was actually the State Government who approved the design, which was based on a failed Italian dam that used a laminated design. They apparently thought that tweaks to the design would work to make Paradise dam sound. You can’t blame the contractors as they built the dam to the specs they were given. No Aussie firm would sign off on the dam so a USA firm was engaged, who just quietly disbanded not long after they signed off on the soundness of the dam, so there is no-one to sue. Typical Labor government monumental stuff up and then cover up. We live in Bundaberg and know some of the contractors. They had grave doubts as to the soundness of the dam design before construction even started.
@@kaykitchen9540So, the State Government (Must be all highly qualified dam design engineers) can approve a dam project against the advice of professional, highly qualified dam engineers? Gee. That must be a "winning formula", especially long term. 😂
I don't think the engineers are guilty, it was the construction company who cut corners. Like in every project or company, there is a good, well-engineered solution and then the pennyflinchers come and render most of the planning useless. Since there are several dams which work just fine, there are not problems in general.
I personally worked onsite at Paradise Dam doing repairs after the first big flood event, was a big push to make it safe before the summer storms returned. Many don’t realise just how much rain fell upstream preceding that flood! They have a mini-hydro electric power generator rated around 3megawatts as I recall, and the whole structure went underwater. (We worked on that part also). The engineer told me if the could have harnessed all the energy during the spill it would have generated 61gigawatts! Used $1million of just concrete supply to fill the 21metre deep hole that was created at the base of the spillway 😮
There was no discussion of holding the original builder accountable for the errors leading to the shorter projected lifespan and the need for a replacement dam.
Since the damn hasn’t failed I don’t think there’s anything to hold them liable for. The new one is being built based on the likelihood of failure in the future.
queenslander here, can confirm flooding is a real threat. every 5-10 years we have a 1:5000 event, then approximately each 1-2 years its a 1:200 event. quite a few people i know have ptsd and have lost houses, the last bad flood my friend lost the lower level of their house with all their memories and keepsakes.. its a common problem up and down the east coast of australia. when it gets bad the "mud army" comes out and everyone rallies around and helps the community.
for 150 years stubborn queenslanders continue to settle on floodplains. Every 10 years they drown completely, every year someone whines about heavy tropical rains, for 100+ years well known house type there is "queenslander" which is specially designed to be flooded without big destroy... nothing changes. Untaughtable.
@@antontsau The TRUTH. Insurance Company's will probably effect more land use change than self interested Politicians. The provincial "queenslander", on stilts, goes under too, and then there is the cyclonic wind element destruction, even when anchored to the ground. Then there is the 'Deep North' mentality, happy in denial.
The Bundaberg region has a LONG history of the wrong dam in the wrong place. Monduran Dam, I'm looking at you. AFTER it was built, they found out that the walls are porous and it leaches too much iron into the water to make it safe for drinking as originally intended.
Same as the dam that supplies almost all the water for Sydney, the Warragamba. The catchment area for the dam is up in the Goulburn area which like now and then has a very low rainfall average.The Goulburn dam which services many thousands has gone down to a puddle many times over the years
@@lachlandavis9878, that is the use it has been put to. It wasn't how the dam was sold to the public however. The locals were told something very much different, as the water in Bundaberg is bloody awful by Australian standards (Burnett Heads water is nigh on undrinkable if you are not a local). I was a lad during its construction, I've broken toes on its spillway. Monduran Dam that was promised was never the one delivered.
This is a common occurrence in Australia. All they do is feasibility studies, build something that is inadequate or has potential issues. Then another feasibility studies, followed by repairs. This goes on and on. All to enrich the well connected contractors. Welcome to the lucky country.
They should get the CPC (Communist party of China) to build it. It will be better. Plus they can build other infrastructures in Australia, like the high speed rail. It will be beneficial to all if they can build high speed rail all around Australia. Indonesia has already seen massive benefits with their China-made Whoosh high-speed railway.
Babe it is the same for all countries.... it happens more in third world countries, my country included. Imagine rebuilding a 400 million USD (converted) Senate house beautification project, when the current structure is still sound and still nice. The politicians in my country are probably window shopping for their next property.abroad 🤣🤣🤣
It's really incredible. So much of the cost premium in first world construction is in planning, verifying, and having consultant "experts" recheck everything thrice over. Truly unbelievable this can happen. Presumably they spent all that money "verifying" that a novel, cheaper form of construction would work, and then lo and behold, it absolutely doesn't. Think they're too good for the tried and true methods used everywhere else in the world, apparently.
I'm sure the upgrade to the 40+ year old QSAC stadium will impress the rest of the world at the Olympics. Okay, so the 100 metres sprints will only be over 80 metres (tribute to John Clark and Brian Dawe) and the public transport to QSAC is horrendous but don't worry, the world will be impressed.
We urgently need to ditch the dam(n) Olympics before it’s too late. (Pun intended). With 8 years to go, it’s already a clusterf#ck, and can only get worse. But don’t worry, we taxpayers will pick up the tab! 😡
A bit of definition is needed here for what a 200-year storm is. It has nothing to do with frequency but of odds of happening (0.5% chance per year, per location). From the State of MN DNR website: One of the more misleading phrases used in meteorology and hydrology is 100-year storm. The phrase implies that an intense rainstorm dubbed as a 100-year event, dropped rainfall totals heretofore unseen for 100 years, and not to be experienced again for another century. This is a logical, but incorrect conclusion to draw from the phrase. More precisely worded, a 100-year storm drops rainfall totals that have a one percent probability of occurring at that location in any year. Encountering a 100-year storm on one day does nothing to change the probability of receiving the same amount of precipitation the very next day. A better way to describe these unusual events is to refer to a one percent probability storm. However, the momentum created by repeated usage over time will assure that 100-year storm will remain in the public and scientific lexicon. Intense rainfall events are often geographically isolated. Therefore, increased population density, improved precipitation monitoring networks, and radar-based precipitation estimation have increased the likelihood of capturing (measuring) heavy rain events. Also, improved communication allows for faster and more complete transfer of weather information. When the neighboring county is walloped by a 100-year storm, we hear about it quickly. Invariably we will vicariously "experience" the event and wonder why 100-year storms seem to be occurring every other week!
Well explained. It's also useful to understand that the probability of very rare/extreme events changes much faster than the probability of more common events when the distribution is shifted slightly. So quite a small change in the mean can give a 5-fold increase in extreme event probability.
You do know that a one in one hundred year flood have been redefined in Australia. I know all dams in New South Wales have had all their dams upgraded with new emergency spillways and cables drilled through the dam wall into the rock under the dam wall to stop walls from lifting if overtopped.
There's nothing wrong with the terminology. People being unaware of how probability works doesn't negate it. If anything, it will help normal people in recognizing that the model is no longer accurate. These forecasts are based on historical data, pre-climate change. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the probability has increased above 1% in many areas. You do make a great point about the vicarious "experience", though, I see how that can create issues for peoples comprehension.
So let me get this straight. If I hear some one say that the 1953 Brisbane Australia flood was a one in 100 year event and another happens in 2011, 68 years later, I am wrong to call the masters of weather predictions drongos.
Not quite Australias most expensive infrastructure failure... the Wellcamp quarantine facility in Queensland cost over $300M and didn't get used at all.
I live in the South Burnett (upstream of the dam), have followed the whole debacle closely, and still learned a boatload of new stuff from this video. Thank you, B1M :)
The question is who authorised the original mix content as such a low cement percentage, knowing it was well below traditional mixture levels. Plus how much cement was originally submitted in the itemised bill. It does sound like a certain country's practice of doing the absolute bare minimum with zero safety margins in their calculations.
It wasn't Luigi the concrete guy, it was a dodgy government that wanted a low quote and they found shady contractors that said they could build it at that price. Which they did, with predictable results. The contractors naturally formed a company to do this job and dissolved it immediately after the work was completed.
If you want something built half assed, get it done in Queensland. But seriously, the moment you realise this would cost taxpayers zero if we made mining companies pay tax.
@@smalltime0and the sky is blue. Your point is? If you taxed the mining companies, this would cost the taxpayer zero. The purpose of the dam is irrelevant.
For any other non-Queenslanders who have never heard of this, it might be because the project was approved in 2002 by the Liberal party by a personal friend of John Howard, David Kemp. Outside of Queensland, the Mudoch and Nine-Fairfax press (which was headed by Peter Costello) has been silent about this debacle. 🤷🏾♂️
In the 70's and 80's in Queensland we had regular wet seasons, cyclones down the coast, lots of flooding. An old joke was, you could set your watch to the afternoon storms. Other times we had drought. I don't think it's abnormal, just cycles.
Too true, Wivenhoe has had issues for ages and were partially the reason for the mismanagement that flooded Brisbane in 2011. They are still saying they are trying to fix it 13 years latter, which to me seems way too long.
Don't forget They relocated a whole town to build the Wivenhoe dam and its way too small for what they've built around it I drive over it every day to go to work it's a nightmare when it floods and the landscape around it has totally changed because they have to continually release the water flooding the whole area
What would happen if all the top engineers, the builders, and politicians responsible for this fiasco were thrown in jail (or worse). Would those subsequent engineers, builders and politicians of major high dollar project take that a reason to not be so fucking incompetent?
There was actually a flood in 2011. After which they spent a lot of money on widening the apron because of erosion issues. I think there was a couple of times before 2013 they had to spend money on maintenance and repairs. The fish elevator that was installed to help the endangered lung fish in the river never really worked. Then after 2013 flood they decided that yeah nah it's buggered. Spend more money on lowering it, spend more money on testing it, spend more money on deciding on how to fix it, come up with a plan then decide to f' it we'll just build a new one. When that will happen, who knows because the government is pushing for pumped hydro bs now and at one point they said the dam was off the table but in the budget just handed down they (or the media) said they have allocated funds. Meanwhile, there is a company that wants to dig for coal in the middle of prime farming land on the edge of Bundaberg and potentially stuff up the ground water table and suck it up to their hearts content. But we make good rum though.
The flooding in 2011 and 2013 was caused by changing the Burnett river mouth to south facing instead of north facing, as every river flowing out of the East coast of Australia does. This is because of the ocean current that runs up the East coast of Australia. By the Port Authority changing the river mouth to head south this meant that flood waters butted up against the ocean current that moves north up the coast and backed up, flooding inland, instead of being sucked into the ocean current as happens with all the other rivers when their mouths face north. Another totally stupid decision by a government authority that caused untold misery to thousands of people. And now the Burnett river has to be dredged continually to stop debris building up because it doesn’t get sucked up into the East coast current, as used to happen. The decision to change the direction of the river mouth was made against the advice of the Port Authority ‘s own hydrologist. We live on the Burnett River, not far from the mouth, and have seen a copy of the hydrologist’s original advice, that had been suppressed and only came to light after much digging and then by an order by the then Premier that it be released. The Port Authority said they only had one copy so couldn’t release the document - as if photocopiers didn’t exist. Sounds like a cover up.
@@kaykitchen9540 It will silt up regardless. Silt gets deposited where there is a drop in water flow like where the river widens or deep below the tidal level like where is has been dredged. That is why there was a large amount of deposits around Harriet Island, Millaquin bend was scoured out and the port was silted up after the flood. It is also why it was found that additional river dredging would have little effect on the reduction in floods. Widening the river at the 3x 200m wide choke points downstream of the city to greater than 400m (the length of the Burnett Bridge, the width of the rest of the downstream river and the mouth are all 400m or greater) would enable a more free flowing river, less water would be forced over land and would lower a 2013 flood by at least a metre. While I agree that there would have possibly been a beneficial sucking effect if the mouth was more north facing, I doubt it would have changed the city flooding. I wonder what the purpose of putting a larger than necessary bend in the river mouth was.
@@kaykitchen9540 Paradise Dam and the areas downstream at Drinan, Bungadoo, and other areas between Paradise and Bundaberg all flooded because it RAINED - a lot! Yes. there were major floods in 2011/12 and 2013,, but there was a major flood of Burnett River in 1940s with waters at Wallaville as high as 2013, and my parents remembered another slightly lower major flood in 1950s. I also remember the river flooding when I was a child in 1960s and 1970s, cutting the Bruce Highway and road to Bundaberg. Maybe flooding in Bundaberg was worse in 2013 because of the change of the mouth (I wasn't around in the 1940s, ha ha), but I doubt that would affect the areas between Paradise and Sharon. The Elliott and Kolan Rivers also flooded at that time, and the mouths of both changed significantly with the amount of sand and silt washed down.
As a former Bundabergian (the largest town downstream of the dam) I remember when it was being build as a teen, there was such fanfare at its opening. Sad to see, but not a surprise, even just a few short years after it had opened, the operators were reducing the level of storage when the first issues were identified. This has been kicking around for a long time, so its kinda nice to see they finally made a call and are just getting on with it.
Which private contractor was hired at great cost and either didn’t know how to, or didn’t care to, create high quality concrete? And are they being sued? And who approved the specs? And who inspected the work?
dingus, First rule of Roller Compacted Concrete face Dam, You don't let water flow over the dam Second rule of Roller Compacted Concrete face Dam, You don't let water flow over the dam you control the water height by ether using a pipes to turbine powering a electric generators in a power station or all Concrete gated structure with a spillway.. best way would be both with a emergency spillway foot or two lower than the top of the dam
The spillway at the Oroville dam was rebuilt in RCC, so you can have water flowing over an RCC surface - you just have to built it to the right spec. See many videos by blancolirio on the details of the reconstruction.
I reckon someone is cashing in big for the new dam. No way it should cost that much but Australia appears to have the highest costs even comparing to the wealthy Europeans.
The dam thing should never have been built in the first place. There's a couple of points the video gets wrong: Firstly, Australia's situation isn't helped by dams as much as you think. I realise this is counterintuitive, but it comes down to Australia's weather being erratic, so you can't predict and plan water storage like you can elsewhere in the world, and a dam tends to lose water through evaporation. What Australia needs to manage water is more efficient water usage (in the case of agriculture, moving towards more water efficient crops) and water recycling Secondly, before the dam was built, the farming demand didn't exist. That's one of the reasons why the 2013 floods caused so much damage, the predicted water removal from irrigation wasn't happening so the dam ended up overfull. From inception, the Paradise Dam was a bad idea, and the net gains have nowhere near met the costs, both in terms of money spent and environmental damage.
A major part of the cost difference between the Spitallam Dam replacement and Paradise Dam replacement is the ground conditions and properties of the natural materials you’re building on. With Spitallam you’ve got nice hard rock you can sink relatively shallow anchors into, effectively just building the dam off the rock foundations. As mentioned in the video the soil around Paradise is… soil, and poor quality soil too. So you have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars ‘remediating’ and/or replacing the natural soil with select engineered materials that can function as a reliable foundation. THEN you start building the dam. For that reason it’s not really fair to directly compare the costs of the two dam replacement projects as they have drastically different engineering contexts. It is a useful way to easily visualise the cost of dam engineering in different contexts though.
I recently started working at SunWater, the owners of this dam as a graduate engineer. I’m actually really excited to work on this project coming in my next grad rotation in this team since I think it’ll be a great learning experience! Can’t believe you made a video about it hahhha
A case of building something cheap in the short term, ending up costing far more in the longer term. Happens all the time here in Australian infrastructure construction.
During construction of the new dam they will also need to divert overflow from the old dam in some way. Major construction projects in Australia seem to always have a lot of problems. One major issue in building concrete dams is getting the concrete right. Seems they didn’t.
I can remember that dams built in the United States of America have also collapse and on a look on Wikipedia claims there have been about 40 dam that have collapsed over the years - so I don’t think Australia is the only country with dodgy dams.
Not worth. Its flood dam, fills once a year with low average water intake and has very low level drop (5M is 40% of capacity). Generators will not be able to work there more than a month in a year, in rain season, but will cost heaps of money to build and to maintaine all year round. Warragamba with its 150M drop has generators, but they were NEVER used for the whole history. Not worth.
My dad lives in the region and reckons there were lots of problems during the initial construction where the tradies/workers would not listen to the engineers.
The climate changing didn't damage the dam! Good grief. Previous bad events didn't damage the dam because the dam wasn't there! That's the issue we face, more habitation and infrastructure that can be damaged , NOT changing climate events.
The IPCC Scientific Reports say that there is NO evidence that the small amount of increase in warming has cause any extreme weather events. Why does this guy lie? He must get $$ from NGO's.
Nope, the changing climate has changed the frequency and intensity of extreme weather. All dams are designed with flood frequency forecasting in mind, and because of climate change, all flood frequency forecasting is incorrect and out of date. If any flood control dam spills twice in 20 years, that is rock solid evidence that the flood frequency forecasting was wrong. They use detailed flood data from the previous century, so that's how you can tell the climate is changing.
240 million? That dam in Victoria would cost 240 billion and be finished 20 years past due date at a cost of 350 billion. Where'd Dan Andrews disappear to?
ah that explains a lot! moved back home after 30 years working in Vic. my friend who helped me move, I took him fishing. Paradice dam, it was very low, like if you put a boat in the water you still had a about 100m to go after the cement boat ramp ended. I know that river and there something not right about the water level, thanks for the video answered some questions, a cold drizzling rain on a Sunday afternoon they were pouring concrete, and we went fishing (bagged 5 catfish).
@@TheB1M can you do a piece on the absolutely wild costs of infrastructure in Australia? Saw a couple of your other vids on an underwater tunnel ($7BN) and Rail Baltica (€5.8BN) - that's just the COST OVERRUN on a suburban freeway project close to me! (North-East Link, Melbourne). Why???! Love your stuff btw, keep it coming - thanks!
Australian dams are tricky. Not only do you have to build them high enough so the water can't get over, but also deep enough so it can't go... down under. I'm not sorry.
Would also like a look at warragamba dam, its the primary dam for Sydney and provides water for a few million people (there are smaller dams that also provide some such as woronora dam in the south) and back in 2019 it was at 20-30% capacity but it has been constantly overflowing and damaging everything built on the floodplains in the west since. It last spilled a few days ago and there have been plans to build the dam a bit higher.
That isn't a failure of the dam however, the river would still be flowing there if the dam didn't exist. Rather, it's a failure of whoever allowed building on a floodplain without first taking measures to avoid the risk of flooding. Emphasis on that needing to be done first, before the houses were built not after they've been flooded.
The failure was sugarcoated and nobody held responsible for this negligence. That’s why infrastructure assets in Australia is more expensive than overseas 🤦
Could be an engineering issue but I don't think so. From experience, I believe there was poor or next to no quality assurance conducted during the build. Even concrete that encases pipelines where I work has to be in spec IE: slump, temperature, MPA strength & x amount of kgs of fibre per m3. There are a lot more factors involved but I am only referring to the concrete in this instance. An officer checks every truck load before it is pumped & it is turned away if not within spec.
What happens with the finished dam (1st one) once the new dam is built downstream of it? That old dam has sediment build up, plus crumbling concrete, which all lowering the water storage capacity of the new dam? The best option is to completely demolish the old dam in a drought period, then rebuild the new dam incorporating any recoverable/recycled material from old dam to reduce costs of reconstruction?
Any flood events unexpectedly occuring during this construction would have the added benefit of removing the already accumulated sediment, provided dam completed before the next drought breaking deluge occurs or is expected.
As an Aussie Queenslander, our dams are all cooked. Catastrophic floods every few years. The dam operators were charged with mud*r in 2013. It was all man created chaos
It apears you are not recognising that the reservoirs water volume is determined by the shape of the catchment area more so than the wall height. It is possible that lowering the wall by 10 percent can reduce the volume by 40 percent.
What's especially crazy about the replacement dam in Switzerland being cheaper is the conditions the workers need to build in and getting the material all the way up there Australia is definitely doing a lot wrong
Most of the $1.2B to build the new dam is going on foundations - the clay subsoil there is really crap stuff. That was part of the problem with the original. The Swiss one is on solid granite.
@al-rediph If the curved parts on both ends were curved the opposite ways it would be much stronger so the dam couldn't move. An arch is an arch. They are much stronger when any pressure against it it from the outside of the curve.
@@muddymo7641 There is no one dam architecture for all situations. Not all dams are arch dams, many are gravity dams like this. An arch dam makes sense, in a very deep valley where the dam will join the mountain sides for anchoring. In such cases you also have limited place, a remote setting, requires high quality and expensive materials. In other situations, a gravity dam makes more sense, and are more safe and less expensive then an arch one. This is a gravity dam, and the sides have to follow the topography to contain the water and there is not mountains rock to anchor an arch dam into it (pressure will move on arch to the outside). More important, the load of the side part is much, much lower as the water depth is smaller, the straight part is where critical load is (water death), not the sides. There is nothing wrong with the dam architecture, gravity dams like this are very common, there is something wrong with the RCC formulation that was used.
I grew up in Bundaberg and hear about developments in this saga from family still living there. I now live in Toowoomba - you should do a story on the second range crossing here! It was only open 2 or 3 years before the shortcuts taken when making it forced them to close it for major repairs. We like taking shortcuts here in Australia apparently...
Head to brilliant.org/TheB1M/ for a 30-day free trial and get 20% off an annual premium subscription 🙌
You don't usually report on failures. Why pick this one?
@@jacobkuntflapphe actually does report on failures and fixes all the time. Literally look at his last few videos. Don’t be a sensitive snowflake.
@@jacobkuntflapp He could do a daily episode on china alone if he did that...
@@invinciblemode calm down, princess lol
so this interglacial period we are in right now is now called climate change but climate change is supposed to be man-made so who started the integration period seeing no man was around in 130 000 BC I need clarification because you must be big smart and me Mia midwit. ??
i'm sure the consultants, contractors and politicians responsible for the first dam cashed out and aren't being held accountable.
You can be dam sure about that... 'straya
Another set of consultants will come in and clean up with an assessment of root cause analysis, recommendations, etc.
They’ll employ more PR teams and spend large amounts on sham community consultations.
Everyone wins except the taxpayer. We have a satire program in Australia called Utopia set in a fictional government works department. Depressingly it is very accurate.
Of course not, can’t hold the politicians and construction company responsible right, how were they to know the shoddy construction would cause problems
Of course. It's Australia. They got bonuses.
joke on you, they build the second dam 😂
Concrete that is later found to be of insufficient quality almost always means that someone cut corners and pocketed the difference.
Something the Russians and Chinese know all about.
That's Peter Beattie for you.
But the thing is. concrete quality checks are always carried out at every pour. Seems a politician wanted to come in under budget.
The mafia?
Yet Roman aqueducts are standing to this day. They knew how to make stuff last.
Build it cheap build it twice.
At a higher price than building it well once 🤪
The examples are ALL related to weather extremes forced by climate change.
Probably all from the same contractor too. Raking it in $$$$
Or you do like in brazil.
Take tax payers' money. Do nothing. Let things flood. Blame climate change. Ask for more money next year.
Rinse and repeat
Money baby
What about the Commission of Inquiry Report (COIR) from 2022? If you knew anything about RCC dam construction and governance processes for major State Government infrastructure projects and you read the Commission of Inquiry Report you would know that this project was destined to be a failure PRIOR to the acceptance of the Consortium which constructed the dam. The truth of this major engineering failure (costing $1B+) has never been publicly exposed. The reasons for this failure (which can easily happen again with the new replacement dam) are a combination of the following decisions: previous Queensland Premiers including Bettie were responsible for outsourcing dam design and construction to the private sector, creating a company in the first instance to own the dam but who knew nothing about dam ownership, selecting a consortium which used a dam design that had never been constructed on this scale in Australia, no rigorous testing of the RCC was undertaken, there was no site supervision of the work to ensure it was carried out according to the contract conditions, there were only two South African engineers who had any experience with constructing a dam of this type while the dam was being constructed around the clock and finally the COIR showed that many contractural conditions were never followed (the dam was designed by an American engineer). In other words the COIR was a white wash (because of the terms on the inquiry and the Commission's inability to understand these issues) and to date no person or company has ever been made accountable for this disaster. Finally, as far as I know, the location of the new dam being 70m downstream of the original dam must also address poor foundation conditions.
Sooooo... the next dam is going to be a cluster fuck as well. Good to know, good to know.
Sounds like the Queensland I know & love.
This channel is good until they do videos on stuff you have a tiny bit of knowledge on or do a quick google search on. Countless errors/ommisson of basic context etc. I recall one re tunnel boring machines on a London underground project & the number they quoted just didn't seem right, literally took 60 seconds to google, come across an official report on the government website & get the true figures with much more info. Literally info anyone doing research on would find in seconds. Also a lot of the videos are literally built/edited around sponsors who also worked on the project. Still a decent channel, but could be better imo...that's all.
This consortium model Australia and so many others seem to adore has to go away. Minimizing taxpayer costs in the near term shifts all of the risk on to taxpayers for the life of the project and ultimately costs so much more.
Mate thank you so much for this. Wondered why we hadn't heard of this. Disgraceful .
Again thank you for the wonderful detail
Anyone else from Australia here who's never heard of this??
Aussie here. I never heard about this dodgy dam.
I've heard about it quite a few times. Still don't understand why the second one is expected to cost 10 times as much.
Basically a Qld issue.. and their Govt #&#*-up
I live in bundaberg which is downstream so it's quite a known and active issue amongst the community
Nope. Which surprises me.
I thought I'd seen all the episodes of "Utopia"
So the original plan was to strengthen the plasticine using chickpeas, but in a surprise turn, it transpires that tinned chickpeas don't have the same strength as fresh ones.
Now question on my mind is, are they leaving enough space for the third dam?
Queenslands meant to flood. They love it
The third dam, can go on the inside
@@george2113 If we put them in vertically, we could fit several!
Maybe if they’d used lentils
not once did i hear "trouble in paradise" i know its low langing fruit but still
A missed opportunity for sure!
Shoulda been the no-brainer subtitle, agree!
I can't help but feel they jinxed it by naming it "Paradise". That's like saying "at least nothing else can go wrong".
if a current affair had covered it they 100% would not have missed the opportunity
Paradise lost.
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bots
Sadly in Australia we hear about a lot of half assed construction project more often than we should
I’m in Sydney - in an assessment centre a month back, I had to work with this one guy who just refused to build our mini-bridge to specification, who kept going “trust me bro” even though the bridge (his design) clearly didn’t fit specifications. If he gets hired, then god help the engineering industry in Australia.
@@kaihang4685 the money he saves on building can go towards a substantial bribe to get the contract
It seems to be a recent phenomenon. Plenty of major infrastructure was built in the past without issues like this. I suspect that this failure, like some recent high-rise apartment building failures, was the result of building to a price instead of engineering things for safety.
Snowy problem at all bro.
Because governments go for the lowest quote, not the best value.
Make sure you are sitting down if you ever talk to a Bundaberg farmer about this topic.. The management of this project by the Queensland government was an absolute disgrace. Thank you Fred for covering a topic that not many people know about.
You are so right. We live in Bundaberg and know some of the contractors. The dam design was based on a laminated technique that was used in a failed Italian dam. The QLD govt thought that tweaks to the design would make the dam safe. They couldn’t get an Aussie engineering firm to sign off on the dam construction so they used a USA firm, who disbanded a couple of months after they signed off on the dam, so there is no-one to sue. The contractors built the dam to specs but they had grave doubts on the dam’s soundness from day 1. Typical Labor party stuff up, wasting billions of taxpayers money.
Melbourne doesn’t even have a rail line to the airport. Money definitely can’t go to dam when millions in Melbourne need traffic congestion eased.
@@MrWhitmen1981 Then you will need to get to the airport because Melbourne will run out of food. What is wrong with the busses. Work fine for me.
I witnessed houses come off there stumps in Bundaberg main street and washed down the road and smashed into pieces
@@kaykitchen9540 Don't get all political, the Libs have had more then there fair share of monumental stuff-ups.
That's a dam expensive mistake
Bro I'm flooding with laughter! 😂😂😂😂
@@ئەنیمێ And im wetting myself
Damn!
I can hardly hold back my laughter!
Dammit I was gonna say the same thing !
The original engineers and contractors should go to prison over this.
Agree 💯 Criminal negligence..
lol you mean they will get a walk in the park and probably even get bonuses
It was actually the State Government who approved the design, which was based on a failed Italian dam that used a laminated design. They apparently thought that tweaks to the design would work to make Paradise dam sound. You can’t blame the contractors as they built the dam to the specs they were given. No Aussie firm would sign off on the dam so a USA firm was engaged, who just quietly disbanded not long after they signed off on the soundness of the dam, so there is no-one to sue. Typical Labor government monumental stuff up and then cover up. We live in Bundaberg and know some of the contractors. They had grave doubts as to the soundness of the dam design before construction even started.
@@kaykitchen9540So, the State Government (Must be all highly qualified dam design engineers) can approve a dam project against the advice of professional, highly qualified dam engineers? Gee. That must be a "winning formula", especially long term. 😂
I don't think the engineers are guilty, it was the construction company who cut corners. Like in every project or company, there is a good, well-engineered solution and then the pennyflinchers come and render most of the planning useless.
Since there are several dams which work just fine, there are not problems in general.
Oh dam.
Never seen a video caption like this that makes me think it's just deflection for the three gorges dam....
Dam it
Best Dam video so far
You’re god dam right
A condammed dam.
I personally worked onsite at Paradise Dam doing repairs after the first big flood event, was a big push to make it safe before the summer storms returned.
Many don’t realise just how much rain fell upstream preceding that flood!
They have a mini-hydro electric power generator rated around 3megawatts as I recall, and the whole structure went underwater. (We worked on that part also). The engineer told me if the could have harnessed all the energy during the spill it would have generated 61gigawatts!
Used $1million of just concrete supply to fill the 21metre deep hole that was created at the base of the spillway 😮
There was no discussion of holding the original builder accountable for the errors leading to the shorter projected lifespan and the need for a replacement dam.
should they be?
If they built it to its specs then not their fault
This is an engineering channel.
builders are never held to account in Australia
@@bloodvue They did not build it to spec whatsoever, the construction was apparently done by people who had zero experience with dams.
The costs suggest cronyism and kickbacks. Original builders should be held liable for costs if they chose the cement ratio.
That's the Labor way...
Since the damn hasn’t failed I don’t think there’s anything to hold them liable for. The new one is being built based on the likelihood of failure in the future.
@@maxwellgriffith you think the dam actually has to collapse before the people responsible can be held to account?
@@michaelnoble2432 Depends on the type of construction contract the client had with the other parties involved.
@@michaelnoble2432Legally, yes. Are there any civil or criminal infractions that have been committed?
queenslander here, can confirm flooding is a real threat.
every 5-10 years we have a 1:5000 event, then approximately each 1-2 years its a 1:200 event.
quite a few people i know have ptsd and have lost houses, the last bad flood my friend lost the lower level of their house with all their memories and keepsakes.. its a common problem up and down the east coast of australia.
when it gets bad the "mud army" comes out and everyone rallies around and helps the community.
during a rain event 1000mm in a 24hr period is not uncommon to be recorded by multiple locations in catchments for dams.
for 150 years stubborn queenslanders continue to settle on floodplains. Every 10 years they drown completely, every year someone whines about heavy tropical rains, for 100+ years well known house type there is "queenslander" which is specially designed to be flooded without big destroy... nothing changes. Untaughtable.
@@antontsau The TRUTH.
Insurance Company's will probably effect more land use change than self interested Politicians.
The provincial "queenslander", on stilts, goes under too, and then there is the cyclonic wind element destruction, even when anchored to the ground.
Then there is the 'Deep North' mentality, happy in denial.
Yep. A family had their family home pretty much destroyed by a mud slide in the 2011 floods.
Stop lying that you have 1:5000 year floods every 5-10 years, utter bullshit
The Bundaberg region has a LONG history of the wrong dam in the wrong place. Monduran Dam, I'm looking at you. AFTER it was built, they found out that the walls are porous and it leaches too much iron into the water to make it safe for drinking as originally intended.
Same as the dam that supplies almost all the water for Sydney, the Warragamba. The catchment area for the dam is up in the Goulburn area which like now and then has a very low rainfall average.The Goulburn dam which services many thousands has gone down to a puddle many times over the years
A dam tragedy..
Fred Haigh Dam was built for irrigation, and it's been a great success at that
@@lachlandavis9878, that is the use it has been put to. It wasn't how the dam was sold to the public however.
The locals were told something very much different, as the water in Bundaberg is bloody awful by Australian standards (Burnett Heads water is nigh on undrinkable if you are not a local).
I was a lad during its construction, I've broken toes on its spillway. Monduran Dam that was promised was never the one delivered.
Are you implying that building dams using chicken wire is not safe?
This is a common occurrence in Australia.
All they do is feasibility studies, build something that is inadequate or has potential issues. Then another feasibility studies, followed by repairs. This goes on and on.
All to enrich the well connected contractors.
Welcome to the lucky country.
Well "lucky" if you're a on the government approved contractor/consultant list.
@@langdons2848 Where do I apply?
They should get the CPC (Communist party of China) to build it. It will be better. Plus they can build other infrastructures in Australia, like the high speed rail. It will be beneficial to all if they can build high speed rail all around Australia.
Indonesia has already seen massive benefits with their China-made Whoosh high-speed railway.
Babe it is the same for all countries.... it happens more in third world countries, my country included. Imagine rebuilding a 400 million USD (converted) Senate house beautification project, when the current structure is still sound and still nice. The politicians in my country are probably window shopping for their next property.abroad 🤣🤣🤣
It's really incredible. So much of the cost premium in first world construction is in planning, verifying, and having consultant "experts" recheck everything thrice over. Truly unbelievable this can happen. Presumably they spent all that money "verifying" that a novel, cheaper form of construction would work, and then lo and behold, it absolutely doesn't. Think they're too good for the tried and true methods used everywhere else in the world, apparently.
The Mad Max franchise, Australia's greatest cultural export, has made the whole world aware of how precious water is to them.
Sounds like a standard Australian project
Should have got Tasmanians to build it instead of those banana benders. We make proper dams here.
And Queensland is going to host the Olympics ???????? Looks like another cluster for the state.
Already way over budget and the games have another 8 years of disastrous overspending to go.
I'm sure the upgrade to the 40+ year old QSAC stadium will impress the rest of the world at the Olympics. Okay, so the 100 metres sprints will only be over 80 metres (tribute to John Clark and Brian Dawe) and the public transport to QSAC is horrendous but don't worry, the world will be impressed.
We urgently need to ditch the dam(n) Olympics before it’s too late. (Pun intended).
With 8 years to go, it’s already a clusterf#ck, and can only get worse.
But don’t worry, we taxpayers will pick up the tab! 😡
Bloated bureaucracy draining public resources
A bit of definition is needed here for what a 200-year storm is. It has nothing to do with frequency but of odds of happening (0.5% chance per year, per location). From the State of MN DNR website:
One of the more misleading phrases used in meteorology and hydrology is 100-year storm. The phrase implies that an intense rainstorm dubbed as a 100-year event, dropped rainfall totals heretofore unseen for 100 years, and not to be experienced again for another century. This is a logical, but incorrect conclusion to draw from the phrase. More precisely worded, a 100-year storm drops rainfall totals that have a one percent probability of occurring at that location in any year. Encountering a 100-year storm on one day does nothing to change the probability of receiving the same amount of precipitation the very next day.
A better way to describe these unusual events is to refer to a one percent probability storm. However, the momentum created by repeated usage over time will assure that 100-year storm will remain in the public and scientific lexicon.
Intense rainfall events are often geographically isolated. Therefore, increased population density, improved precipitation monitoring networks, and radar-based precipitation estimation have increased the likelihood of capturing (measuring) heavy rain events. Also, improved communication allows for faster and more complete transfer of weather information. When the neighboring county is walloped by a 100-year storm, we hear about it quickly. Invariably we will vicariously "experience" the event and wonder why 100-year storms seem to be occurring every other week!
Well explained. It's also useful to understand that the probability of very rare/extreme events changes much faster than the probability of more common events when the distribution is shifted slightly. So quite a small change in the mean can give a 5-fold increase in extreme event probability.
This comment has nothing to do with poor construction methods or severe lack of concrete. The blame is pure government incompetence.
You do know that a one in one hundred year flood have been redefined in Australia. I know all dams in New South Wales have had all their dams upgraded with new emergency spillways and cables drilled through the dam wall into the rock under the dam wall to stop walls from lifting if overtopped.
There's nothing wrong with the terminology. People being unaware of how probability works doesn't negate it. If anything, it will help normal people in recognizing that the model is no longer accurate. These forecasts are based on historical data, pre-climate change. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the probability has increased above 1% in many areas.
You do make a great point about the vicarious "experience", though, I see how that can create issues for peoples comprehension.
So let me get this straight. If I hear some one say that the 1953 Brisbane Australia flood was a one in 100 year event and another happens in 2011, 68 years later, I am wrong to call the masters of weather predictions drongos.
No one can piss away money better than an Australian politician.
Africa has entered the chat.
Oh yes. Swedens government. I assume this dam was made by Swedes. They own all sorts of cement and turbines. ABB
You haven't met an American liberal.
South east Asia politician : 👁️👄👁️
Try Malaysian politicians…
Not quite Australias most expensive infrastructure failure... the Wellcamp quarantine facility in Queensland cost over $300M and didn't get used at all.
Yet!
Or ever.
it certainly will be by the time they fix it. Snowy hydro is looking dicey at this point
QLD desalination plant cost 1 billion, has never been used and requires 10 mil in annual maintenance
I'm sure they have a future use in mind , when their disinformation bill goes through .
Wow... between this and the lack of oversight in the high-rise building industry, Australia has a shocking amount of incompetency...
Who took the backhanders for the dodgy concrete mix?
Tax payers
The Mafia?
The Union?
I live in the South Burnett (upstream of the dam), have followed the whole debacle closely, and still learned a boatload of new stuff from this video. Thank you, B1M :)
The question is who authorised the original mix content as such a low cement percentage, knowing it was well below traditional mixture levels.
Plus how much cement was originally submitted in the itemised bill.
It does sound like a certain country's practice of doing the absolute bare minimum with zero safety margins in their calculations.
It wasn't Luigi the concrete guy, it was a dodgy government that wanted a low quote and they found shady contractors that said they could build it at that price. Which they did, with predictable results. The contractors naturally formed a company to do this job and dissolved it immediately after the work was completed.
This is honestly better infomation than the local state gov is giving out.
If you want something built half assed, get it done in Queensland. But seriously, the moment you realise this would cost taxpayers zero if we made mining companies pay tax.
This is an irrigation/flood abatement dam
@@smalltime0and the sky is blue. Your point is? If you taxed the mining companies, this would cost the taxpayer zero. The purpose of the dam is irrelevant.
It is Australia wide. Look at flammable cladding in Victoria. Snowy Hydro II. Mascot Towers. Opal Towers.
That list goes on and on.
Agree 💯 why I hate projects down up here as they either fail or become outdated so quickly..
For any other non-Queenslanders who have never heard of this, it might be because the project was approved in 2002 by the Liberal party by a personal friend of John Howard, David Kemp. Outside of Queensland, the Mudoch and Nine-Fairfax press (which was headed by Peter Costello) has been silent about this debacle. 🤷🏾♂️
The dam was built by the Queensland government however and it literally has a Labor party members name on it. Peter Beattie.
@@JDMNINJA851 you're funny. Check your meds.
Dam that doesn’t sound good hope they fix it
In the 70's and 80's in Queensland we had regular wet seasons, cyclones down the coast, lots of flooding. An old joke was, you could set your watch to the afternoon storms. Other times we had drought. I don't think it's abnormal, just cycles.
Queensland has a history of building dams way too small , Wivenhoe springs to mind .
Too dam small.
Too true, Wivenhoe has had issues for ages and were partially the reason for the mismanagement that flooded Brisbane in 2011. They are still saying they are trying to fix it 13 years latter, which to me seems way too long.
Don't forget They relocated a whole town to build the Wivenhoe dam and its way too small for what they've built around it I drive over it every day to go to work it's a nightmare when it floods and the landscape around it has totally changed because they have to continually release the water flooding the whole area
@@coralappo9716they release it because they don't allow it to fill anymore.
Wivenhoe was adequate when it was built. It is the population growth of the SE corner that has made it inadequate.
What would happen if all the top engineers, the builders, and politicians responsible for this fiasco were thrown in jail (or worse). Would those subsequent engineers, builders and politicians of major high dollar project take that a reason to not be so fucking incompetent?
You would need more prison space.
I have a friend in Australia named Kyle, I’ll ask if he can help with the dam.
Thanks mate.
I think that’s Dave’s mate
Kyle’s the clown who fcuked up the concrete mix in the first place. Tell him to stay the fcuk away!
Can Michael help too?
Good onya, Champ 😂
I'm missing the information why the original dam was built using so little cement. - Were the standards different? Did the construction company cheat?
And who signed off on the work or was that outsourced by the government too?
Off course they did..
Oh my gosh. My town had made The B1M
You're underwater in Paradise?!
Bundy punches above its weight, good little town
@@dralligator69 Yeah, your fuck-ups have been acknowledged internationally now, well done!
@@TheB1M they hold their breath a lot
It's the Australian way. "Hold my beer, watch me fuck this up"
Pretty much. They seem arrogant to not get a second opinion from actual Dam experts from Europe or the USA FFS
I watched the one on the swiss dam. That was good as well. thanks for posting....
My farther told me that when he was a teenager in Queensland in the 40's there was at least 24 inches of rain in 24 hours, the rain gauge overflowed.
My farther mentioned that day they had to walk out along a railway track.
Hey Aussie 🥰
There was actually a flood in 2011. After which they spent a lot of money on widening the apron because of erosion issues. I think there was a couple of times before 2013 they had to spend money on maintenance and repairs. The fish elevator that was installed to help the endangered lung fish in the river never really worked. Then after 2013 flood they decided that yeah nah it's buggered. Spend more money on lowering it, spend more money on testing it, spend more money on deciding on how to fix it, come up with a plan then decide to f' it we'll just build a new one. When that will happen, who knows because the government is pushing for pumped hydro bs now and at one point they said the dam was off the table but in the budget just handed down they (or the media) said they have allocated funds. Meanwhile, there is a company that wants to dig for coal in the middle of prime farming land on the edge of Bundaberg and potentially stuff up the ground water table and suck it up to their hearts content. But we make good rum though.
The flooding in 2011 and 2013 was caused by changing the Burnett river mouth to south facing instead of north facing, as every river flowing out of the East coast of Australia does. This is because of the ocean current that runs up the East coast of Australia. By the Port Authority changing the river mouth to head south this meant that flood waters butted up against the ocean current that moves north up the coast and backed up, flooding inland, instead of being sucked into the ocean current as happens with all the other rivers when their mouths face north. Another totally stupid decision by a government authority that caused untold misery to thousands of people. And now the Burnett river has to be dredged continually to stop debris building up because it doesn’t get sucked up into the East coast current, as used to happen. The decision to change the direction of the river mouth was made against the advice of the Port Authority ‘s own hydrologist. We live on the Burnett River, not far from the mouth, and have seen a copy of the hydrologist’s original advice, that had been suppressed and only came to light after much digging and then by an order by the then Premier that it be released. The Port Authority said they only had one copy so couldn’t release the document - as if photocopiers didn’t exist. Sounds like a cover up.
@@kaykitchen9540 It will silt up regardless. Silt gets deposited where there is a drop in water flow like where the river widens or deep below the tidal level like where is has been dredged. That is why there was a large amount of deposits around Harriet Island, Millaquin bend was scoured out and the port was silted up after the flood. It is also why it was found that additional river dredging would have little effect on the reduction in floods. Widening the river at the 3x 200m wide choke points downstream of the city to greater than 400m (the length of the Burnett Bridge, the width of the rest of the downstream river and the mouth are all 400m or greater) would enable a more free flowing river, less water would be forced over land and would lower a 2013 flood by at least a metre.
While I agree that there would have possibly been a beneficial sucking effect if the mouth was more north facing, I doubt it would have changed the city flooding. I wonder what the purpose of putting a larger than necessary bend in the river mouth was.
@@kaykitchen9540 Paradise Dam and the areas downstream at Drinan, Bungadoo, and other areas between Paradise and Bundaberg all flooded because it RAINED - a lot! Yes. there were major floods in 2011/12 and 2013,, but there was a major flood of Burnett River in 1940s with waters at Wallaville as high as 2013, and my parents remembered another slightly lower major flood in 1950s. I also remember the river flooding when I was a child in 1960s and 1970s, cutting the Bruce Highway and road to Bundaberg. Maybe flooding in Bundaberg was worse in 2013 because of the change of the mouth (I wasn't around in the 1940s, ha ha), but I doubt that would affect the areas between Paradise and Sharon. The Elliott and Kolan Rivers also flooded at that time, and the mouths of both changed significantly with the amount of sand and silt washed down.
@@diannecameron8359 yes but it never flooded before I. Bundaberg or Burnett Heads before they changed the direction of the river mouth
As a former Bundabergian (the largest town downstream of the dam) I remember when it was being build as a teen, there was such fanfare at its opening. Sad to see, but not a surprise, even just a few short years after it had opened, the operators were reducing the level of storage when the first issues were identified. This has been kicking around for a long time, so its kinda nice to see they finally made a call and are just getting on with it.
Wonder where they'll build the third dam?
What construction technique are they using for the replacement dam?
It's a roller compacted dam again as we understand it.... hopefully with a different contractor this time
@@TheB1M Hopefully!
Oh dear 🤦♂️
@@TheB1M it depends who's paying off the politicians who are approving it this time.
The wrong one.
Which private contractor was hired at great cost and either didn’t know how to, or didn’t care to, create high quality concrete? And are they being sued? And who approved the specs? And who inspected the work?
That was the comment from most of us in Bundaberg!
dingus, First rule of Roller Compacted Concrete face Dam, You don't let water flow over the dam
Second rule of Roller Compacted Concrete face Dam, You don't let water flow over the dam
you control the water height by ether using a pipes to turbine powering a electric generators in
a power station or all Concrete gated structure with a spillway.. best way would be both
with a emergency spillway foot or two lower than the top of the dam
Biggest floods in burnett River ever. Bundaberg severely impacted.
The spillway at the Oroville dam was rebuilt in RCC, so you can have water flowing over an RCC surface - you just have to built it to the right spec. See many videos by blancolirio on the details of the reconstruction.
By building underground watergate you can discharge more water when flood but problem is it need manual operation
And cost of building it also higher
Does this dam even have a turbine?
@@xxwookey no the emergency spillway is RCC
only the big hole under the main spillway was RCC
How it gone from AU$240 million dollars to build it (2005) to AU$1.2 billion dollars to repair it (2023). Somebody blew it.
I reckon someone is cashing in big for the new dam. No way it should cost that much but Australia appears to have the highest costs even comparing to the wealthy Europeans.
Well somebody blew someone
the extra 980ish million will be for road cones and hi-vis vests
Should we tell B1M about Snowy 2?
Yes!
Hell yeah
The dam thing should never have been built in the first place.
There's a couple of points the video gets wrong:
Firstly, Australia's situation isn't helped by dams as much as you think. I realise this is counterintuitive, but it comes down to Australia's weather being erratic, so you can't predict and plan water storage like you can elsewhere in the world, and a dam tends to lose water through evaporation. What Australia needs to manage water is more efficient water usage (in the case of agriculture, moving towards more water efficient crops) and water recycling
Secondly, before the dam was built, the farming demand didn't exist. That's one of the reasons why the 2013 floods caused so much damage, the predicted water removal from irrigation wasn't happening so the dam ended up overfull.
From inception, the Paradise Dam was a bad idea, and the net gains have nowhere near met the costs, both in terms of money spent and environmental damage.
B1M makes the best dam videos on the internet!
A major part of the cost difference between the Spitallam Dam replacement and Paradise Dam replacement is the ground conditions and properties of the natural materials you’re building on. With Spitallam you’ve got nice hard rock you can sink relatively shallow anchors into, effectively just building the dam off the rock foundations.
As mentioned in the video the soil around Paradise is… soil, and poor quality soil too. So you have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars ‘remediating’ and/or replacing the natural soil with select engineered materials that can function as a reliable foundation. THEN you start building the dam.
For that reason it’s not really fair to directly compare the costs of the two dam replacement projects as they have drastically different engineering contexts. It is a useful way to easily visualise the cost of dam engineering in different contexts though.
I recently started working at SunWater, the owners of this dam as a graduate engineer. I’m actually really excited to work on this project coming in my next grad rotation in this team since I think it’ll be a great learning experience! Can’t believe you made a video about it hahhha
So you can't fix it either.
Typical Australian Government. Can never get things right and waste our taxes on failures. Each Polly should be held accountable.
I live in Queensland and have never even heard of this!! Shows how much our incompetent Government is covering up its mistakes!!
It's been all over the national news, even outback wa where i'm at now.
Originally from just up the road from this dam.
esaftey commissioner...
A case of building something cheap in the short term, ending up costing far more in the longer term. Happens all the time here in Australian infrastructure construction.
Amazing flow of the video especially around the advertisement. Just Brilliant!
And that line let's get back to the dam video
During construction of the new dam they will also need to divert overflow from the old dam in some way. Major construction projects in Australia seem to always have a lot of problems. One major issue in building concrete dams is getting the concrete right. Seems they didn’t.
I can remember that dams built in the United States of America have also collapse and on a look on Wikipedia claims there have been about 40 dam that have collapsed over the years - so I don’t think Australia is the only country with dodgy dams.
Why didn't they integrate a powerplant to that dam? Isn't this river flowing down the wall just a waste of energy?
Not worth. Its flood dam, fills once a year with low average water intake and has very low level drop (5M is 40% of capacity). Generators will not be able to work there more than a month in a year, in rain season, but will cost heaps of money to build and to maintaine all year round.
Warragamba with its 150M drop has generators, but they were NEVER used for the whole history. Not worth.
@@antontsau thanx. sounds reasonable.
Operating head too low and water level too inconsistent for viable power extraction.
We are the lucky country. We don't need to think logically.
@@cze33e amendment. Not need to think.
My dad lives in the region and reckons there were lots of problems during the initial construction where the tradies/workers would not listen to the engineers.
The climate changing didn't damage the dam! Good grief. Previous bad events didn't damage the dam because the dam wasn't there! That's the issue we face, more habitation and infrastructure that can be damaged , NOT changing climate events.
The IPCC Scientific Reports say that there is NO evidence that the small amount of increase in warming has cause any extreme weather events. Why does this guy lie? He must get $$ from NGO's.
Nope, the changing climate has changed the frequency and intensity of extreme weather. All dams are designed with flood frequency forecasting in mind, and because of climate change, all flood frequency forecasting is incorrect and out of date. If any flood control dam spills twice in 20 years, that is rock solid evidence that the flood frequency forecasting was wrong. They use detailed flood data from the previous century, so that's how you can tell the climate is changing.
I love the one in 200 year events that come ever year or two that get labeled climate change.😅😅😅
Biggest hoax ever...
💯
240 million? That dam in Victoria would cost 240 billion and be finished 20 years past due date at a cost of 350 billion. Where'd Dan Andrews disappear to?
I was hoping to see more details on the flood damage... Instead it was left somewhat vague.
It was ClIMaTe ChANGE! ThAT's ALl yoU nEEd tO KnOW!
@@davenz000 💯😂
ah that explains a lot! moved back home after 30 years working in Vic. my friend who helped me move, I took him fishing. Paradice dam, it was very low, like if you put a boat in the water you still had a about 100m to go after the cement boat ramp ended. I know that river and there something not right about the water level, thanks for the video answered some questions, a cold drizzling rain on a Sunday afternoon they were pouring concrete, and we went fishing (bagged 5 catfish).
Yay, more videos around Australia. Love to see it. Aussie Aussie Aussie
Not a great ad this one...
@@TheB1M can you do a piece on the absolutely wild costs of infrastructure in Australia? Saw a couple of your other vids on an underwater tunnel ($7BN) and Rail Baltica (€5.8BN) - that's just the COST OVERRUN on a suburban freeway project close to me! (North-East Link, Melbourne). Why???!
Love your stuff btw, keep it coming - thanks!
Crikey! Yes, sounds very interesting.
@@TheB1M Ha, great ad or not, it's just good to know we can screw things up well enough to rival the megapowers!
Dam Australia
Not to mention the first of the two record floods in 2011. The 2013 flood was big but the issues started in the first one.
“Let’s get back to the dam video”👀 😂😂nice
The inverted gravity should have been the first sign a dam was a bad idea.
I've got a migraine from diving because the water keeps falling out of my pool
how do they prevent the old dam from crumpling and damaging the new dam wall?
build another dam in front of the new dam
Australian dams are tricky. Not only do you have to build them high enough so the water can't get over, but also deep enough so it can't go... down under.
I'm not sorry.
Rest assured that no one will be held responsible for this stuff up..
When bean counters force engineering comprises… you just have that bad feeling.
Would also like a look at warragamba dam, its the primary dam for Sydney and provides water for a few million people (there are smaller dams that also provide some such as woronora dam in the south) and back in 2019 it was at 20-30% capacity but it has been constantly overflowing and damaging everything built on the floodplains in the west since. It last spilled a few days ago and there have been plans to build the dam a bit higher.
That isn't a failure of the dam however, the river would still be flowing there if the dam didn't exist.
Rather, it's a failure of whoever allowed building on a floodplain without first taking measures to avoid the risk of flooding. Emphasis on that needing to be done first, before the houses were built not after they've been flooded.
To quote australian UA-camr Site Inspections: "Non Compliant!" and "The Best Way to Fix This Is to Demo and Start Again!"
any reasons known for the Swiss dam in a rocky mountain range being four times cheaper?
Why is ours So much more expensive !?
Many palms to grease probably!
How long until the project starts/finishes? Anybody know
So who were the people who approved how the dam was going to be built in the first place?
how would you go about dismantling the old dam once the new is up? i doubt u would want to risk a break and have it crash into the new one
You just leave it where it is.
@@WesB1972 And, as the new dam is taller than the old one, it just lies there underwater.
missed opportunity to say "Australia's Damned Dam"
Whether it's Sydney's motorways or, apparently, Queenslands dams. Futureproofing has *_NEVER_* been a consideration of the developers
who made the decision to use a large amount of clay instead of sand for the concrete?
An accountant, as a good guess.
@@aeroearthThe Mafia?
The failure was sugarcoated and nobody held responsible for this negligence. That’s why infrastructure assets in Australia is more expensive than overseas 🤦
Not enough dam puns.
Yep, I thought there would be a flood of them
They lost a paradise of opportunities for dam puns...
it was abstract in design; not concrete enough
Could be an engineering issue but I don't think so.
From experience, I believe there was poor or next to no quality assurance conducted during the build.
Even concrete that encases pipelines where I work has to be in spec IE: slump, temperature, MPA strength & x amount of kgs of fibre per m3.
There are a lot more factors involved but I am only referring to the concrete in this instance.
An officer checks every truck load before it is pumped & it is turned away if not within spec.
B1M was better when there were no sponsors for videos
The engineers overseeing the original specifications should be named and shamed and then required to publicly explain themselves.
Obviously shoddy work. Who will get a slap on the wrist?
Can't do anything about it unfortunately unless we risk companies going bust
Can't tax them either
What happens with the finished dam (1st one) once the new dam is built downstream of it? That old dam has sediment build up, plus crumbling concrete, which all lowering the water storage capacity of the new dam?
The best option is to completely demolish the old dam in a drought period, then rebuild the new dam incorporating any recoverable/recycled material from old dam to reduce costs of reconstruction?
Any flood events unexpectedly occuring during this construction would have the added benefit of removing the already accumulated sediment, provided dam completed before the next drought breaking deluge occurs or is expected.
Dam it, sounds like the dam builders are not Brilliant after all.
As an Aussie Queenslander, our dams are all cooked. Catastrophic floods every few years. The dam operators were charged with mud*r in 2013. It was all man created chaos
All stemming from trying to hide a little it of old world evidence that's easy to find everywhere anyway.
2:09
so was the capacity reduced by 40% or reduced to 40% of its original capacity? the infographic and narration seem to conflict.
It apears you are not recognising that the reservoirs water volume is determined by the shape of the catchment area more so than the wall height. It is possible that lowering the wall by 10 percent can reduce the volume by 40 percent.
What's especially crazy about the replacement dam in Switzerland being cheaper is the conditions the workers need to build in and getting the material all the way up there
Australia is definitely doing a lot wrong
Most of the $1.2B to build the new dam is going on foundations - the clay subsoil there is really crap stuff. That was part of the problem with the original. The Swiss one is on solid granite.
The radius parts on each end were built backwards. That's not the way arches work
??? The dam is straight and the end part need to follow the terrain.
@al-rediph
If the curved parts on both ends were curved the opposite ways it would be much stronger so the dam couldn't move. An arch is an arch. They are much stronger when any pressure against it it from the outside of the curve.
@@muddymo7641 There is no one dam architecture for all situations. Not all dams are arch dams, many are gravity dams like this.
An arch dam makes sense, in a very deep valley where the dam will join the mountain sides for anchoring. In such cases you also have limited place, a remote setting, requires high quality and expensive materials.
In other situations, a gravity dam makes more sense, and are more safe and less expensive then an arch one.
This is a gravity dam, and the sides have to follow the topography to contain the water and there is not mountains rock to anchor an arch dam into it (pressure will move on arch to the outside).
More important, the load of the side part is much, much lower as the water depth is smaller, the straight part is where critical load is (water death), not the sides.
There is nothing wrong with the dam architecture, gravity dams like this are very common, there is something wrong with the RCC formulation that was used.
Australia hasn't had much luck building things lately.
"Dam good" You're a wordsmith.
Wouldn't it just be cheaper to teach all those downstream of the dam how to swim?
hey its Queensland, they're slow learners at most things.
Queensland is similar to Arkansas. No swimming, just banjo and quality time with siblings
Weren’t strength tests done on the concrete mix done before it was used?
QLD Labor government at it again...
I grew up in Bundaberg and hear about developments in this saga from family still living there. I now live in Toowoomba - you should do a story on the second range crossing here! It was only open 2 or 3 years before the shortcuts taken when making it forced them to close it for major repairs. We like taking shortcuts here in Australia apparently...