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
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