GOOD NEWS ON LAKE MENINDEE

What a wonderful sight! Water is now pouring into Lake Menindee after the gates were opened connecting it once again to the Darling-Baaka River. 

With water in the lakes, invertebrates will hatch, fish will breed, birds will arrive and the lake will be once again teem with life. The local community and Barkandji will enjoy the lakes and tourists will arrive to revive the local economy.  

This is partly thanks to everyone who supported the campaign to stop the reconfiguration of the Menindee Lakes. The government had planned to do engineering works to cut off the lakes from the Darling-Baaka River in the name of “efficiency”.   

The outcry from the community forced the government to pause those engineering works and open the gates to Lake Menindee to let it fill with flood waters from Queensland and northern NSW.   

Even though the Menindee Lakes have been given a reprieve, this incredible ecosystem will remain under threat until the government promises to abandon the engineering once and for all.  

You can be sure that the Nature Conservation Council will never rest until the lakes are saved and our rivers and wetlands get the water and the protection they so desperately need. 

This means limiting irrigation upstream to sustainable levels to restore natural flows along the Darling-Baaka all the way to the Menindee Lakes and then on to the confluence with the Murray River at Wentworth.  

It also means opposing unsustainable floodplain harvesting licences where water is diverted from our waterways into private dams. 

Jane MacAllister 
Water Organiser 
Nature Conservation Council  

 

MORE WATER NEEDED FOR MURRAY-DARLING BASIN

The draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan was released for public comment late last year by the government instrumentality the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA).  This followed the abortive draft , released a year earlier, which was withdrawn by the federal government following intensive lobbying by the irrigation industry.

The irrigation industry is once again noisily opposing the new draft, claiming that it proposes too much water for the environment.  This is despite the environmental allocation under the new draft being reduced to 2,700 gigalitres. 

The current Draft Plan is woefully inadequate.  Given the billions of dollars to be spent with the aim of improving the health of this vital river system, the Australian community will not be getting the result it is paying for if the current draft is accepted by the parliament later this year. 

What are the major problems with the Draft?

Firstly, the water to be allocated to the river is inadequate.  Scientific studies have indicated that between 4,000 and 7,600 gigalitres are required for there to be any hope of improving the health of the river.

Secondly, the draft provides for a 2,600 gigalitre increase in groundwater extraction.  This is folly considering the lack of knowledge about which underground aquifers are connected to rivers and wetlands within the Basin.  This extraction could undermine any gains made through reducing surface extraction.

Thirdly, the draft does not consider the likely impacts of climate change. Predictions indicate the available water in the system could be reduced by up to 37% by 2030.  With no planning for this, it is inevitable that the environment will once again miss out – with river health further compromised.

Irrigators opposed to returning reasonable flows to the river system are ignoring the fact that, in the long term, their industries rely on a healthy river system.  And irrigators are not the only stakeholders in this matter.  Tourist operators, floodplain graziers and the entire Australian community have an interest in a healthy Murray Darling.  And so of course do the voiceless – the species of flora and fauna which depend on the system for their survival.

Comments on the Plan are due by 16^th April 2012.  For further information on submissions and the MDBA planning process see the Murray-Darling Basin Authority website.

  

 - L Blain

This post in a slightly shorter form was originally published in "Voices for the Earth"  on the Environment Page in The Daily Examiner on 2oth February 2012.