ARC Fellowship
Cost-effective integrated engineering and 'community partnerships' solution to a latent water policy issue: private dam management and flood safety
Principal Researchers: Dr John Pisaniello and Prof. Jennifer McKay
Project aims to further develop an engineering model for cost-effective innovative flood safety design/review for private dams in south-eastern Australia and integrate this with community impact assessment. Together, this is a 'community partnerships' solution to a significant water policy vacuum on private dam safety and flood policy. Expected outcomes: improved risk transparency for dam owners and State Government, minimising costs of failures, i.e. loss of life, damage to public and private infrastructure and environment; giving owners an affordable and effective design/review procedure to better manage their dams, providing data on community responses and water law reform proposals consonant with international best-practice.
Results of Community Attitude Surveys in Victoria
A total of 77 farmers owning a total of 140 farm dams were surveyed in Victoria to test their response to the recent law reforms, and the availability of the cost-effective spillway design/review technology. Initially, a list of 417 farmers owning dams for the purpose of grape growing were targeted in the survey. The grape growing industry was selected because of its tendency to require the more larger-sized, significant type farm dams.
After an initial telephone call and invitation to participate in the survey, approximately 120 of the 417 agreed to have the relevant information (i.e., an information brochure) sent to them and to be called back for interview. Following the call-backs to these 120 participants, only 77 agreed to further participate in the actual questionnaire. Those which refused to further participate gave reasons such as (1) being too busy, (2) they felt that they had already been questioned too much from previous government surveys and questionnaires, and (3) they felt the survey was not relevant to their dams and they knew nothing about the new laws.
The telephone interview questionnaire was around 25 minutes in length and attempted to test the farmers’ attitude towards a number of aspects including:
(a) Is water shared fairly? (b) Communication with neighbours? (c) Willingness to join a Water Allocation and Management Plan (WAMP)? (d) Attitude towards the Victorian water authorities? (e) Is your dam safe? (f) Amount willing to spend on dam safety per year? (g) Reaction to the cost-effective flood safety procedure?
From analysis of the survey results, it can be reported that (1) 50% of farmers agreed that water is shared fairly in their neighbourhood, while another 35% neither agreed or disagreed, (2) only 22% of participants talked with their neighbours about the capture of runoff in their dams, (3) 82% of the farmers had not participated in the development of a water allocation plan, and of those, only 48% were willing to participate in the water allocation planning process, (4) only 17% of participants trusted their water authority, (5) almost 100% of participants believed that their dam(s) is safe, (6) 62% of participants currently spend nothing on maintaining their dam(s) per year, and 81% of these intend to continue spending nothing per year to maintaining their spillway(s) in order to satisfy the new dam safety laws, and (7) only 22% gave positive feedback towards the cost-effective spillway safety technology and indicated a willingness to take advantage of it in some way in the future.
The above results indicate that the law reforms in Victoria have made some inroads in achieving fairer water allocation/sharing and better dam safety in the State. However, more work is clearly needed to encourage farmers to talk with their neighbours, develop a trust in their water authority and participate in the water allocation planning process. Most importantly, more effort is needed to raise farmer awareness in dam safety issues, as most seem to have developed the complacent attitude that since the dam has not failed to now, then it will never fail: this is indicated by the overwhelming number of participants who believe their dams are safe while not spending any money to maintain them each year, and not willing to even check the situation despite the availability of the affordable spillway design/review technology. This shows that efficient and effective administration of the laws is vital.