THE STATE GOVERNMENT OF Queensland, Australia, is calling for a review of the capacity of all spillways at major dams located upstream of population centres.The review arose due to recent revisions of the Probable Maximum Precipitation estimates by the Bureau of Meteorology.

Queensland’s Natural Resources Minister has said the assessment of whether the spillways met national dam safety standards would be determined in the review, and that it would depend on the capacity of the spillways to cope with a ‘very rare large flood’ based on rainfall estimates.
The Minister said that over the next three years, the department of Natural Resources would be requiring dam owners to re-estimate the floods produced by the forecast rare rainfall events and determine the adequacy of the spillways.