The Murray Darling Basin Authority released a ‘Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan’ yesterday which had been touted as an independent scientific report. My impression of the document, however, is that it is an audacious grab for more water based on popular myths.
Amongst the many unsubstantiated claims in the Guide, is mention of an 80 percent decline in the abundance of waterbirds across the Basin since 1983.
I am a little familiar with numbers of water birds in the Macquarie Marshes. According to various public statements by expert Richard Kingsford numbers have also been in dramatic decline here, but his actual data, only available from 1985 through to 2001, indicates an increase.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Yeah Jen,
Go to Lake Eyre when it is dry and you don’t see much in the way of waders but have a butcher’s at the moment and it’ll blow yer mind.
These experts use the occurrence of big drys and big wets to draw any conclusions they wish.
And that’s even before you toss in political bias and dodgy data.
Remind you of anyone else on this blog?
Jennifer,
Has anyone drilled for core samples either side of the barrages as surely these would show layers of salt water inundation in times past (before barrages)?
Simon
I’m just a bear, but I think I now understand how it all works. First you decide what you want to decide. For example you might decide there is not enough water in the river, or its getting hotter and hotter. Then you need to get the people convinced you are right about what you have decided by telling them over and over you are right, and only bad people would think you are wrong because they don’t care about the planet. Then you tell the people they need to pay a lot of money to help put things right because you have decided that is the best thing to do. Finally, if you have some time left over and you are in a generous mood, you might ask a few people if they have any facts or evidence to support what you have decided, cross out any information you decide you don’t like and put the remainder in a little report on your website. Its all pretty simple.
Yes Jen this is just an audacious grab for more water based on popular myths. The experts seem to forget that a drought is the cause the decline in the environment. They are so busy blaming the food producers, labelling them as environmental killers that they have lost all common sense. It is been my experience that where rice was grown (that feeds over 40 different countries worldwide) there were so much wildlife of varying types. Since the water has been cutback (with the farmers still liable to pay for a 100% allocation that they never get and of course have no means of paying for) the wildife has declined significantly. People need to realise that our food producers have been for many years been proactive in water conservation and have poured so much into sustaining the land. Nobody talks about the mining industry and what that does to the environment where big holes are dug and then left. Now if that is not destroying the environment then what is. All the water this plan is taking from farmers is just getting sent down South and out to sea.
During the Election Campaign, The Climate Sceptics President, Leon Ashby announced their policy of diverting water from the North: http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2010/08/climate-sceptic-candidates-to-announce.html
It seems better tha taking away water from Food Producing farmers.
Why should water be sent from Queensland to NSW? And there is enough water in the MDB anyway – no need to take water from anyone.
get rid of the hobby farms set up by city slickers to grow grapes for their boutique vineyards and cask wine and there’s ample water for the serious farmers producing food. The Hay plain used to be vast dryland, now it’s row upon row of city slicker wine grapes.
we have to use the water properly.
Farmers know that flood follows drought, so what happens to ‘buyback’ when the Murray-Darling is awash?
I think Tony Burke has squashed this nonsense in the last 24 hours.
He stated categorically that the govt will not be pursuing any forced sales of water, if the farmers won’t sell voluntarily then they won’t be forced to sell.
Should stir up the idiot greens, but let’s just wait and see if the above statement is true or false.
Quite apart from the fact that the Basin Guide made unsubstantiated claims on bird breeding and decline of river red gums see http://aefweb.info/index.php was the very sobering comments last Friday of MBDA CEO, Rob Freeman on the release of the Basin Guide, when he said “”If the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray mouth were chosen as a priority in this particular example, then insufficient water will be available in the median-to-wet years to meet targets at floodplain sites like Barmah-Millewa forest.”
So, 3000 GL is taken for the environment and yet we still do not have enough to provide water for Living Murray Icon sites. Several years ago the ‘best science’ said 1500 GL was required for a “healthy working river”, now 3000 GL is still not enough. This indeed looks like an “audacious water grab”. Whatever is given will not be enough for some.
For Simon,
Prof Peter Gell submitted fossil evidence to the SA government (Jan 2009) that the Lower Lakes have been partly estuarine in their past. Several media articles about it can be viewed here at http://www.lakesneedwater.org/case-for-seawater .
I find it very hard to believe that only 800 people throughout the whole Murray Darling Basin will be unempoyed by this report. I have asked Senator Nick to have hard look at these figures. Rob Freeman this morning on radio 891 was questioned re this figure which they found hard to believe as well,he more or less suggested what they really meant was that 800 business’s would be in trouble therefore unemployment will be higher. Why not be honest and have the report say 800 business’s but then again 800 sounds better than say 2,000 or 8,000. They are just like the S.A. Govt. and the old Dept. of E&H giving short notice on meetings, no reports made availble to the public other than on the internet, should have been obtainable through your local council. The other thing Rob Freeman mentioned this morning was how you have to link this report with other various reports previously put out by the MDBA. Richard Kingsford is the same person who said that the Lower Lakes have always been fresh in 1914 hate to see what happened in 1915 when salt water reached Mannum and on the 12th, February,1915 The Mount Barker Courier described the Mundoo Barrage in an article entitled “Scene Visited By Settlers. Memorable Gathering.” A barrage is being built of bags,filled with sand as an experiment from Pelican Point to the channel between Hindmarsh and Mundoo Islands, linking up the smaller islets intervening so as to form a break along a natural rocky barrier which will help keep the sea back. Even then the salt water would come up through the main channel past Goolwa, but people are hopeful, if the barrage cannot be constructed there, ythat the course will be less harmful than the inrush into the lakes through the more direct routes. The rest is history after many meetings from 1915 until 1934. 2nd. November, 1934. Article appeared in the Mount Barker Courier saying that work to construct the barrages was to begin immediately.
I read with some interest about the completion at a cost of $688 million of the Wimmera Mallee pipeline in Victoria. By replacing open channels with pipes it is claimed to have saves 103 billion litres of water. Quoting from the website:
“The old, open channel system was unsustainable – more than 80 per cent of water was wasted through seepage and evaporation. Of up to 120 billion litres of water released from storages in the Grampians each year, only 17 billion litres of water reached customers on farms and in towns.”
If savings like that can be made, why would the MDBA be looking to what savings could be made using the $5.8 billion set aside to improve efficiencies rather than spending time suggesting to the region that their water usage is to cust by up to 45%?
Blue Bear is right – with blinkers on, a decision has been made!!
Hi Everyone,
First my apologies as I have been writing and fielding phone calls all day on this issue and now beyond rational thought, but feel obliged to answer a few comments.
First Jennifer is correct, there is plenty of water for all requirements, as long as we have rational decissions being made. (we haven’t had any for 30 years.)
Australia has an abundance of water and an absolute drought of rational thought and planning.
Water in the MDB has never been free nor cheap to irrigators.
Like any other business, water is a cost input that has to be accounted for and farmers, like any business, begin with the question where, how and for what return do I sell my production?
It is the answer to this question, arrived at with assistance from advisors that a farmer decides what to grow with any water he may have at his disposal.
Only those paying for the input (Farmers) can decide which crops to grow.
Douglas,
the Grampians scheme is totally unrelated to the rest of the MDB.
The Wimmera River (which I know well) is about the smallest river in the system and contrary to what is in the MDBA report has not flowed into the Murray for thousands of years,
The open channel system there was primarily for stock and domestic with some irrigation in good years. It flowed through many miles of permeable soils with resultant losses.
What has been done there is practical expenditure that will ensure adequate water for increasing population for decades.
(Long story there as the Greenies are now demanding that the “saved” water be wasted.)
In stark contrast the flood plain valleys of the Goulbourn, Murray, Murrumbodgee, Lachlan and most of the valleys in the upper Darling where the gravity flow of large water volumes often over long distances (the main canal that supplies the MIA is 120 Klms. long and at peak flow can deliver 5000 megalitres per day) is the most efficient fashion known to man and employed on flood plains across the world.
Susan,
the lower lakes were always esturine until we built the barrages in 1940.
Once again Jennifer is totally correct with her article on this.
John,
the Hay plain certainly has some wine grapes but they are a minor irrigated crop there and certainly not grown by city-slicker hobby farmers as you calim.
This whole issue is not as complex as many make out but can be confusing when so much uninformed comment is being thrown about.
Will post some more detail later.
Pikey.
None of this 3000GL of fresh water will make it into the lower Coorong. And it should be remembered that the entire lower lakes would now be part of the Ramsar listed wetlands if it had not been cut in half by the South Australians and their stupid Barrages. They took half a Ramsar wetland and turned it into a second rate, fresh water, introduced Carp habitat. And now the sick bastards want to put whole towns and regions out of business to keep the f@$%& Carp happy.
Most of the water that these clowns plan to “use” to flood the red gum forests will not be transpired by the forests at all. About 75% of it will only be what is called “height water” which is the volume needed to fill the river cross section so the other 25% spills over the banks and into the forest. Amazing, about 6000 years ago mankind first started thinking of ways to achieve the same result as a flood but with less water. Their solution was to lift water up out of the river Nile and hold it there with small embankments. This concept developed from the simple Shaduf, through the Archimedian Screw, the Chinese Cellestial Ladder or endless chain, and on to the piston pump and the hydraulic ram. But these departmental neanderthals are so bogged down in the past that none of this concept has ever graced their grey matter. So if you think rice paddy is an inefficient use of water then take a good look at all the water these hideoids plan to waste to get a few megalitres into a bit of forest.
Just think about the basic elements at play here. The maximum water retention capacity of soil is in clay which holds 25% moisture. So 2.5 megalitres of water/ha will saturate a full metre of soil. Add another 5 megalitres (500mm) of rain in most years and that metre of soil gets saturated 3 times. But if another 7.5 megalitres is wasted in just getting the 2.5 megalitres to flow over the river banks then the forest will use as much water as the rice paddy but with only half the transpiration and growth, with only a tiny fraction of the revenue and a much more limited ecological footprint.
Farmers now have to pay for the cosy arrangement between Ranga’s Labor and Green’s Brownie Bob to to keep the Big Spenders in power. Of course the “never worked in my life” Oakshott will support that, just to get more pay from Dahling Jooliah.
What else one can expect from likes of union boss Crean and his heavies. Together with Greens they will destroy Australian farming industry just to satisfy their urges for socialist new world order. What a bunch of city slickers sickos!
One key stakeholder in this debate has thus far been overlooked: The property developers. Has anybody seen the pilot developments occuring at the lower lakes? I have. No water in the lakes means no buyers. When I hear the words “environmental flows” from the government all I see are “water views” across the lakes. It all fits in with the immigration and big Australia agenda. Residential real estate is the priority here, plain and simple.
Interesting point Chad and no doubt an important one in the debate. I wonder when it will be brought up by main stream media?
Why does Australia have such a stigma when it comes to recycling water? They do it in London. Would it not be cost effective?