Lindsay Millard, David T Roberts, Steven Cox, Andrew Berghuis, Anna Hams
Addressing historical impacts of waterway barriers on regional fisheries values is a major focus for fisheries regulators when assessing proposed water infrastructure projects such as dam safety improvements. To inform prudent investment decisions, it is essential to quantitatively determine the feasibility and benefits of various fish passage options to mitigate barrier effects. In Queensland, the regulatory frameworks require consideration of multiple options to achieve mitigation with the overarching goal to support and restore regional fish productivity. Addressing multiple objectives on large water infrastructure projects can be challenging, particularly for existing assets requiring retrofit solutions. There is a need to balance the requirements for dam safety, water supply reliability, while also mitigating the loss of fish habitat access upstream of barriers. Finding optimal fish passage solutions requires consideration of multiple options and using objective approaches that can weigh up the many aspects. The best solution may not always be the most obvious. Here we describe an approach that addresses multiple objectives through a novel off-site solution that provides increased benefit to the impacted fish community. Seqwater, Queensland,
The approach involved weighing up various fish passage options, informed by stochastic hydrologic
modelling to produce a range of probabilistic scenarios. 120 years of modelled water levels and discharges from the study site and the broader catchment, enabled an evaluation of the benefits and dis-benefits of different options in relation to dam safety, water supply reliability and fish migration opportunities. Inputs to the assessment process included fish habitat availability and migratory needs, capital and operational feasibility considerations. Numerous modelling scenarios were produced to assess a range of possible solutions, both on and off-site, to provide an objective weighting of the relative strengths of each scenario.
In this instance, while an onsite option could be feasibly engineered, it would be costly and given the
hydrology of the system, would operate so infrequently as to provide limited opportunities for fish passage and minimal regional fisheries productivity benefits. The optimal solution found was to provide fish passage on a higher order stream within the same catchment area that has impacted fish migration and access to upstream habitats for the same fish community. This option improves fish habitat access to a larger proportion of the catchment and over a wide range of flow conditions, thus providing greater regional fisheries productivity outcomes.
Our method demonstrated an objective approach to balancing multiple project objectives for dam
improvements. The use of hydrologic modelling combined with fish migration and habitat information, found an optimal solution for regional fisheries productivity goals, while also balancing the dam safety and water supply reliability goals.
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ANCOLD is an incorporated voluntary association of organisations and individual professionals with an interest in dams in Australia.