Continuing my blog posts on salt …
Mick Keogh, from The Australian Farm Institute, wrote in the Australian Financial Review that,
“Dryland salinity is a challenge that Australian farmers must continue to deal with, and cannot ignore. However, successful future management will require …that all involved reject the crisis mentality, and instead become coolly objective about appropriate responses, which in many cases may be to ‘do nothing’.”
This was certainly not the approach that the National Farmers Federation (NFF) was advocating a few years ago. A few months before the detail of the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality was announced,with the promise of $1.4 billion in funding, the NFF and the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) made a claim for $65 billion!
At that time, the bogus dryland salinity audit, claiming 17 million hectares of farmland would be lost to salt, had not been released, but the NFF and member organisations knew its release was imminent.
This is what Wendy Craik, on behalf of the NFF, had to say to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineers in November 2000:
“NFF’s membership was significantly encouraged to hear the Prime Minister himself acknowledge that compensation and incentives were necessary and key components of any implementation strategy for the National Salinity and Water Quality Action Plan.
Whilst we represent very different interests and viewpoints, NFF and ACF are under no illusions about the difficult choices we will face over the next decades. The sheer magnitude of the [environmental] threats facing us if we do nothing was a driving force behind the establishment of our alliance.
NFF and ACF – having identified the problem and put a figure on that cost, have proposed a five-point plan centred on:
1. a 10 year bipartisan commitment to tackling degradation;
2. national leadership by the Commonwealth Government;
3. a new scale of strategic investment;
4. strong private sector engagement; and
5. the active involvement of all Australians.The future will be about repair and change to ensure agricultural production is sustainable and our natural heritage is conserved.
So how does the Salinity and Water Quality Action Plan, rate against the NFF/ACF proposal?
Bipartisan Commitment: We believe there has been acknowledgement by all sides of politics that the issues are so severe and pose such a threat to our resource base that action must be taken.
National Leadership: NFF and ACF warmly welcomed the leadership demonstrated by the Prime Minister in putting the plan to COAG and the commitment by COAG to its implementation. The significance of this commitment by COAG must not be underestimated, it is the first time that every leader of a Government in Australia has agreed to play its’ part in an integrated solution to an environmental issue.
A new scale of investment: It is fair to say the Action Plan is not of the magnitude of investment which NFF and ACF demonstrated was required. We believe the Action Plan offers the groundwork from which a long-term, sustained commitment of significant resources must be made.
Our estimate is that, over 10 years, the public contribution required to achieve sustainability targets will be at least $3.35 billion a year, together with an ongoing maintenance program of $320 million a year.
In terms of government expenditure, this represents $3.7 billion per year, over the next decade.
Given that we spend $43 billion per year on the health of the Australian population, is $3.7 billion too much to spend on the health of our country?
NFF believes that all levels of government should commit to increased and significant levels of financial resourcing to deal with dryland salinity.
This will need to be delivered in the form of a variety of incentives and direct investment.
And it will need to be delivered by working with land managers and communities in the transition to new production and natural resource management systems that will combat the degrading processes.
Strong Private sector engagement: Achieving sustainability targets in rural landscapes will require major management and land use changes over the next 10 to 20 years.
We estimate this will require an investment in the order of $65 billion over the next decade. Of which we estimate about $37 billion should come from government.”
The metropolitan media ran with the $65 billion figure for sometime along with interviews from leading conservationists and farmers … both communicating the same message that agriculture had destroyed the Murray Darling Basin, and the Australian landscape more generally, etcetera, etcetera.
At that time I was working for the Queensland sugar industry and I could not believe the damage NFF was doing to the reputation of Australian farmers … my protests fell on deaf ears. The focus was on securing money from the Action Plan, no one seemed to care too much about the long term implications of ‘crying wolf’ and so effectively.
…………….
Postscript
I received a couple of phone calls from bureaucrats yesterday about my recent blog posts on salt. There is concern that problems still exist and that John Passioura’s paper “From Propaganda to Practicalities – the progressive evolution of the salinity debate” is not a completely accurate assessment of the situation. I am always keen to post the alternative perspective as a guest post, but someone needs to be prepared to articulate the case and put their name to it.
And while John Quiggin avoided comment at my post, he did start his own blog post on the issue, click here. Quiggin’s Federation Scholarship at the University of Queensland is on the topic of sustainability and the Murray Darling Basin, so I am surprised there not more interest in what the models have, and have not, accurately predicted by way of water quality and dryland salinity.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Anyone who wishes to post against dry land salinity control needs to first hop in the SUV and go see for themselves. A trip from Canberra to Adelaide will do for starters.
What do you see Taz?
Thinksy; Salt lakes, ponds and scars
Worsening over the years, or more or less constant?
From the roads it’s difficult to tell Thinksy, especially as I don’t know when they started to form, but I noticed the dead trees on my first trip. Today those trees may be gone.
At night the salt by the roads looks like ice or sheets of water. It’s only while traveling at speed in daylight you may miss them. Any assessment takes time and getting right off the road around there was difficult in any season.
Salts exist naturally in many soils, they are measured by electrical conductivity and soils with salts can be classed as saline or sodic.
One way to move salt is by irrigation or flooding, tree planting is not always successful and is at best experimental –
http://www.rirdc.gov.au/pub/shortreps/sr40.htm
rog; thanks but the issue here is the salt concentration by our farming methods. Moving salt to thick patches is one aspect, getting rid of it is on a grand scale another.
Any denial of the extent of this problem is just plain silly. Searching for truth in other peoples rhetoric is also silly. Looking for security in government policy is likewise dangerous. In making a plea for everyone to use their own heads on environment issue I hope to get more balance in these discussions.
The necessary wisdom is not found in science either. In part one I referred to a program on our ABC this week that nobody here acknowledged. In part it was about critical gaps in our understanding, this leads to poor models and too few people who can act in our recovery programs.
We can use these blogs to test the strength of our foes though, people make their habits so obvious.
That word ‘denial’ is interesting.
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie used it, with some maps that have since been discredited, to threaten western Queensland graziers: details at this earlier post on SALT & DENIAL http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000871.html .
What is that famous saying, “Ignorance is not what you don’t know, it is what you do know that is not correct.”
Some attitudes and platitudes discussed;
“It had been assumed that landholders are either unaware of the extent and impact of less obvious forms of land degradation, such as dryland salinity, or were in a state of denial.
Comparisons of landholder identified salinity affected areas and those predicted by expert maps suggested that landholders had excellent knowledge of the current extent of salinity on their properties.
By contrast, the expert maps (discharge sites and depth to saline ground water) failed to predict saline affected sites identified by half the respondent landholders in the GBD. It is unlikely that landholders would deliberately overstate the extent of salinity on their property.
It is possible that some landholders failed to distinguish between water logged and saline affected areas. Nevertheless, the finding that the expert maps prepared for the GBC – a catchment where there has been a sustained attempt to map ground water and discharge sites – under-stated salinity affected areas by 50 per cent is a cause for concern.
Given the importance of dryland salinity and the upcoming investment of $1.4 billion by the Commonwealth and States under the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, it is critical that regional catchment boards/authorities can accurately map the extent of existing and potential salinity impacts.”
http://www.regional.org.au/au/aanrm/2001/curtis.htm
Good science should not be exclusive in selecting methodology as good practice in a given area is usually handed on like good genes. But over all, we eventually depend on our diversity.
In the SEQld RVMP process, much was made of the extent of the so-called salinity hazzard in the Gatton district. And this was used to try and justify a complete ban on any clearing in the catchment.
The only problem with this is the fact that the gatton farmers have been denied any access to irrigation water from the Brisbane Dam systems and so, must rely on bore water. This reliance on bore water means the aquifer is in a permanently depleted state. And that depleted state means the actual probability of the mapped salinity “hazzard” becomming an actual salinity problem is ZERO.
YOU CANNOT HAVE A WORSENING SALINITY PROBLEM IN A DECLINING AQUIFER.
In fact, the catchment had a significant woody weed problem, the removal of which would play an important role in replenishing the aquifer. But that didn’t discourage one departmental boofhead from the breathtakingly stupid suggestion that “it was uneconomic to pump water to prevent salinity”. It was then followed by equally moronic concern about the consequences of the aquifer being depleted too much. A very curious response to a so-called crisis caused by a water surplus.
It is now more than 18 months since the 2004 Productive Use and Restoration of Saline Lands (PURSL) conference in Rockhampton and there is no sign of any published proceedings. I assume this would be the responsibility of the host State. I wonder what has happened to this body of politically inconvenient science?
Has it been simply deleted overnight like the url for the conference on the DNRM site?
Perhaps the local examples were too inconvenient, a major national vegetable supplier who had completely arrested local salinity problems by irrigating their crop with their own bore water. $65 Billion indeed!
When can we look forward to seeing Wendy Craik driving a taxi?
rog; the GBC is a familiar region up and over the Divide from Melbourne.
Well I could have done a 50:50 or phoned a friend. (Well a “boofhead” in Ian-speak – but definitely not a “spiv”). So I did the latter.
The salinity hazard in the Lockyer catchment has always focussed on the intersect between Marburg sediments and the alluvial sequences (not in the alluvial system explicitly). Ian has a tend to mix his metaphors between irrigation salinity and dryland salinity. He should also be aware that their are 3 types of irrigation salinity (saltwater intrusion, impact on soil of using poor quality groundwater and rising watertables). The Lockyer Valley is somewhat unique in having a deterioration in groundwater quality due to salinity issues (due to over-extraction) in the alluvial landscape and immediately adjacent has a dryland salinity issues related to a history of tree-clearing in sensitive landscapes. I would agree that the use of groundwater pumping will minimise the risk of rising water-tables, but in the Lockyer Valley there has been issues with long-term accumulation in the soil profile due to the quality of the groundwater – many farmers moved to beetroot production (rather than beans etc) because they were adapting to increasing soil salinity levels (not from rising water-tables, but from use of poor quality groundwater).
Once again can twist facts to match your opinion – but he has lost the detail of connecting facts to specific landscape conditions e.g. groundwater pumping can prevent rising watertable salinity (and is used in many irrigation areas), but can have impacts on root-zone salinity and/or river water quality, dependent on how you utilise that groundwater.
Luckily I have just watched the ever helpful 1950s duck and cover film and have assumed a defensive position under the table (with laptop of course).
I asked the lady taxi driver her name today too -but she said it was George (was near the Valley!).
P.S. “Phone a friend” also says any Googler and agent provocateur worth their salt (!!) would know that the rational place to place such proceedings would be at http://www.crcsalinity.com.au/pursl/
and also know that Yeppoon is not Rockhampton and that the year was 2003.
2003, I stand corrected. The years all blend into one when you are being departmentally consulted.
Taz I missed the TV programme you mentioned, but read the edited transcript online. Sad that he’s been marginalised until now but actually a similar type of approach has worked in India: where degraded soils and drought conditions had severely impoverished local communities, building a series of mini-dams (slow continual release) recharged the ground waters, supported crops and livestock and improved the water cycle so the rivers gradually ran longer (with greater volume and life if I remember correctly). It wasn’t successful where the community wouldn’t wait for the wells to recharge and instead took water directly from the mini-dam.
extracted from Austn story:
DR RICHARD BUSH: Peter’s got some theories that really challenge existing theories on how streams and landscapes function. . . . So what’s interesting here is he’s trying to raise the ground water and elsewhere in Australia – I mean, the message is lower the ground water because of salinity, but the results are startling.
DR JOHN WILLIAMS, FMR HEAD CSIRO LAND & WATER: Salinity does take place by a rising water table, but if on top of that rising water table you can actually sit soil with fresh water then you can avoid the problem. So what Peter does, in summary, is he basically fills up the gouge stream channel and then letting the sediment accumulate behind it, and by encouraging, therefore, the water to flood out, fill up the flood plains and create a fresh water lens which sits on the salt.
Worst farming practices over too many years, has caused salt on the land. Usually the human learns by their mistakes, thus gaining experience, leading to positive problem solving.
Farming is a gamble, due to weather, droughts etc, it is obvious that many farmers have not learned anything, rather, they expect more yeild from their land in order to make more money. Best business practices replace respect and care of the soil.
If the gamble does not pay off, who pays?.
The NFF expect all Australians to be active re salt on their land, due to their denegrating the soil. The taxpayer should not have to help bail out farmers who have been irresponsible and negligent in carrying out their worst farming practices.
No one can control rainfall, land clearing can be controlled, if we have responsible politicians and responsible farmers.
Phil, they are all aspects of the one issue. Dryland Salinity is an underexploited aquifer while salt water intrusion comes from an over exploited one. Funny thing, though, none of these distinctions were ever made in the RVMP workshops. In fact, all we ever got was out of state data, mostly lower murray stuff from places so flat that runoff barely exists. And it was all a straight line from clearing to saline armageddon.
The dumbest part of it was in the management prescriptions where the entire catchment above a hazard zone was deemed to pose a risk of expansion of the hazard zone, through the ground water. So any clearing in that catchment was prohibited.
Whats wrong with that? you say. Well in most of the coastal Queensland hills (where most of the trees are) the 1st, 2nd and 3rd order streams produce a series of “Y” intersections where the ground water between the streams will seep into the watercourse because it has nowhere else to go. It will not cross the stream to re-enter the groundwater on the lower side even if the land on the lower side is flat. Which it usually is not. Once discharged into the creek it will remain in the creek as non-storm runoff.
So the only clearing that is likely to contribute to a downstream salinity hazard is clearing that is outside the “Y” and clearing that is within the “Y” formed by 3rd, 4th and higher order streams where the groundwater flow systems are capable of running in parallel with the river.
The clearing within the “Y’s”, on 3rd order streams or less are likely to actually improve river flows and enhance riparian ecosystem health, endurance and biodiversity.
And of course, any larger order streams that that may pass through a gorge, or over a rock sill will also capture most ground water flows and prevent them from expanding a downstream hazard.
But to say that the salinity issue was dealt with in the RVMP process under time constraints with minimal opportunity for discussion is an understatement. It was a disgrace.
I must say, Phil, I am very impressed that you appear to have assumed that the terms boofhead and spiv are designated job titles within DNRM. There is hope for you yet. I look forward to the day when we can discuss how a level 7 boofhead can break through the glass ceiling to become a spiv.
Thinksy; thanks for following it up. That type of practice as show in the ABC repeat goes back a long way in other places, but in today’s drive for science it is far too controversial. To me willows, briars and hawthorns had a place. I started to write about back in the thread but blew it away after a chat with management on another matter.
This bit is not exactly about salinity.
To be brief on background I watched my uncles with their small dozers as a boy after the war during scrub clearing operations over neglected blocks, heap and burn to put carbon back quickly into poor soils. Then they pushed remaining larger logs strait into gullies and creeks to stop soft soil erosion and rebuild habitat around paddocks and deeper into regrowth forest. In other places I watched them drain vast swamplands for fresh dairy farm subdivision under government supervision. We all knew well the contrast.
I looked at privately reclamation on odd places like mineral slag dumps, eroding salty coastal dunes, and compacting clays after orchards or pine plantations with native species propagation experts from Melbourne in the early sixties after a tip from our government forestry officers there. I sent seedlings by air to many places during our tiny trials.
About that time I explored much of the Goulburn Valley at water level and realised serious guttering was occurring everywhere across the flood plains. In most of it any woods had long gone except for a few older specimens along the edges of permanent billabongs. Gravels were particularly unstable and the Breakaway was notorious with fly fishermen for its shallow but swift flows even when releases from Eildon weir were down.
Here there was no timber left to create artificial log jams or much shade for river life.
Best fishing was under steep banks in the smallest streams, channels way back from the river. Only willows can hang on in such places and that is why farmers all over used them in the first place.
Slowing the floods and filling the gutters is just the first stage and this takes us right back, up the steep slopes and into to the pine plantations to see what happens way up there. In the ACT after fires we contoured the landscape after pines and sowed sterile grass while the scientists are thinking about it.
However no one built log jams above our dams in the interim.
What, no contest on the role of stream intersections on preventing downstream salinity, Phil? Have you referred this to a departmental type for comment? Or do I take this silence as sullen confirmation that the “expert consensus” that fed Beattie the “zero tolerance of denial” line on salinity had got it badly wrong? Or were they just deliberately misleading the public to achieve a corporate objective?
You see Phil, from my perspective, it is fairly important to assume that DNRM types are boofheads because the alternative is that they know exactly what they are doing and are lying through their teeth.
Interesting point about the stags, Taz. The best habitat for aquatic species is a tree trunk with entire root bowl intact. This gets lodged in crevices etc to be more stable and provides multiple shelter points. But none of that will take place in any private forests because all codes of practice preclude the cutting of trees within riparian zones. Even the felling of a tree, by accident, into the zones, converts the legitimately commenced and lawful forestry practice into a development offence.
So these codes that claim to establish a minimum standard will actually work as a ceiling with no forest ever being able to improve ecological values above that standard. It is not new, it is what regulations have always done.