The Commonwealth and Governments of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland agreed or noted at this morning’s water summit on the Southern Murray Darling Basin (MDB):
1. The need for a shared understanding of the likely water availability over the next year and a half.
2. The need for an informed whole of Basin approach to be developed collaboratively, not by jurisdictions acting without regard to the consequences for other States.
3. Establish a group of high-level officials drawn from First Ministers’ Departments and the MDB Commission to examine contingency planning to secure urban and town supplies during 2007-08. This group will report to First Ministers by 15 December 2006.
4. Accelerate the implementation of key aspects of the NWI, especially on water trading, overallocation, water accounting and data sharing. Ensure that permanent interstate trading will commence in the southern MDB States by 1 January 2007 as recommended by the National Water Commission. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland also agreed in substance to accept the advice from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on exit fees.
5. Not intervene in Snowy Hydro Ltd commercial arrangements this year.
6. Commission the CSIRO to report progressively by the end of 2007 on sustainable yields of surface and groundwater systems within the MDB, including an examination of assumptions about sustainable yield in light of changes in climate and other issues.
7. The Commonwealth will process speedily its response to major projects under the Australian Government Water Fund.
8. The Commonwealth indicated it was providing over $2.3 billion for a wide range of drought assistance in EC-affected areas, and announced a new initiative (costing approximately $210 million over two years) to extend income support and interest rate subsidies to the owners of small businesses that receive 70 per cent of their income from farm businesses.
9. The States have agreed to pay 10 per cent of interest costs under the Commonwealth’s small business announcement. The States have also agreed to consider a Commonwealth proposal that they follow the lead of Victoria in providing a 50 per cent rebate for municipal and shire rates to eligible recipients, and also to waive or rebate water charges (or equivalents thereof) in EC declared areas where water allocations have been substantially reduced.
10. It has already been agreed that water and climate change would be items for consideration at the next COAG meeting.
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I wrote a blog piece earlier today entitled ‘Murray River: Last Year Biggest Environmental Flow, This Year Water Crisis’ on the water shortage issue.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jen,
Are you aware of any map that shows which River Red Gum forests received benefit from last year’s environmental flow?
Flows are controlled by MDBC
http://www2.mdbc.gov.au/river_murray/river_info/weekly_report/current_wr.pdf
According to the iconic ABC 300 gigs covering 7,000 sq kms of SW NSW were released October last year
http://abc.com.au/news/australia/nsw/brokenh/200510/s1472437.htm
The Federal Government also confirms the watering of the River red gums at http://deh.gov.au/minister/env/2005/mr13oct505.html and at http://www.deh.gov.au/minister/env/2005/mr13sep05.html
The living Murray initative gives some details on the environmetal flow to the wetlands supporting the Red gums http://www.thelivingmurray.mdbc.gov.au/
“Worse drought in 1,000 years” cry the experts – no evidence deemed necessary.
Reinterpreting the past so that the future can be mispredicted, climatologists sow the seeds of fear.
Rog like many journalists doesn’t investigate comments at source ! Nasty – but that what you expect from the looney far right.
Check the source; “South Australian Premier Mike Rann said the Murray-Darling commissioner told the meeting Australia was now facing a one in 1,000 year drought.
“We we were told at the meeting by the Murray-Darling commissioner that we now face, not a one in 100 year drought, but a one in 1,000 year drought,” he said.
Nasty, and true.
They were not briefed on that in the presentation said Howard & Bligh on TV !
see the word “face”
What’s your calculation Rog if it keeps going. Show us your numbers.
Steve M,
You live in Melbourne, only a few hours drive from the Murray River. I suggest you get in a car and go and have a drive along the River. Its only a few hours away. Perhaps start at Albury, drive at least to Echuca … that would take you past the Barmah forest. Better still why not drive on to Barham. It would really help your commentary here. You would be blown away when you got there and saw all the healthy red gums. You might even lose confidence in what you read in The Age.
Splitting hairs Luke.
= Rog has zero information except for bad-mouthing. No idea have you Rog.
http://www.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/54/First_Ministers_Briefing_7Nov06_MDBC.pdf
I can see why they answered they way they did. Might be good for the peanut gallery to get briefed.
Luke,
Thanks for the link. Great find. Interestingly there is no mention of the drought being a 1,000 year event.
Also interestingly, Dreverman does slip between discussion of ‘rainfall’ and ‘inflows’ in the most misleading of ways!
Its sad, because the ‘potential solutions’ for low inflow versus low rainfall are different. Indeed there is much more one can potentially do about low inflows?
Nothing in there about the “1-in-1,000 year drought’.
Handy throwaway line for pollies though.
The MDBC describe the watering efforts at http://www.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/20/July2006-Drought-update.pdf
In summary, less than 1% of the total floodplain in area has been watered.
David,
Thanks for the link. But look again.
What they have written is extraordinary. They are making a comparison between what they artificially watered in 2005 with the area flooded in 1956. Why?
The 1956 flood was devastating to SA. Why this year as a comparison.
How many 1956 flood events should we expect during a worst drought? Indeed why a watering at all during this drought?
Thanks for the advice Jen. However I did visit the Barmah a couple of weeks after it received its environmental flow last year.
What I remember most about that was the clouds of mosquitoes.
As for an assesment of the River Rede Gums, I’m not a tree surgeon.
Steve M, I guess the internet is a great place for someone with no confidence in their powers of observation in the real world.
On the 1 in 1000, as it was stated on TV – it was not in the briefing material. Although they are claiming worst on record (if you want pub bragging rights). I’m fairly sure the 1 in 1000 was comment to a question on the drought keeping going. Some Ministers and the press seemed to have seized on it. I suggest we adopt the MDBC’s pdf as their considered written advice, and work off that. If the drought continues the nation is in new territory ! One in one th ….. what? Rog can do the maths for us.
Going through the slides again in the Dreverman presentation: http://www.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/54/First_Ministers_Briefing_7Nov06_MDBC.pdf
I am struck by slide 4, and the low rainfall in the upper catchment. What weather conditions would create this?
Perhaps a fundamental change in southern hemisphere circulation and ocean currents (nah .. ..)
When you look at slide 9 its seems that drought and flood cycles are well established, at least in recorded history (1892-2006)
Of course Luke would know better, he will google something up.
Under the assumption of no long term trend, the probability of rainfall being below the long term median in any single year is 1/2. By my fumbling mathematics, the probability of seven successive years below the median is 1/128 (roughly a hundred year event). For ten successive years below the median, it is 1/1024 (about a thousand year event). Has this occurred? If so, where? Did I get my sums right?
Davey – yep – I checked this time
Rog – like the world has been cooling since 1998 the rainfall has been in free fall since the 1970s. I’m siding with Bob’s mathematical techniques.
Davey – but not the 10 year run. What area or stations ?
Jen,
it is a nice presentation – where are the data archived that the conclusions are based on so auditors might perform their jobs ?
Would that be thechildren overboard or the WMD audit group? I know Louis – it’s worth a whip around your mates for the FOI application – why don’t you personally lodge it.
more likely with the ‘action to address climate change will roon us all’ group
I am not worried, but it seems the majority of Australians are. That’s a real worry!
The critical media message , dare i say it, as me Hanrahan , is do not worry . “Your not being rational so until you are willing to be , lie down and rest .Let someone whose “on the spot” look after the situation.” (http://productionecologists.blogspot.com)
“Do what you can , where you are and you will be surprised how much a return to responsible engagement will help this country and other countries who need the same sustainable approach to planning . ”
Luke,
I vil ask ze qvestions. Has, for example, the Murray Darling catchment had ten successive years of below median rainfall? Probably a simplistic question. Some parts may, in any one year, be above, and some parts below. Perhaps rainfall is something on which simplistic headline catching statistics are to be treated with utmost suspicion. I question the integrity of journalists and politicians who use them. I wonder if anyone (BoM?) has done a median analysis on temperatures? Again, very complicated. Median of the daily max temps, median of daily min temps etc. It gets a bit like that Michael Palin character who was an expert on Yorkshire rainfall and coal shovels. But then, we were meant to laugh at him.
Davey – I don’t think the analysis is “off the shelf available” – would have to be done. IMHO the best way to integrate is the flow analysis (a la MDB presentation) as long as one adjusts for infrastructure. Most of the pundits here won’t buy it as it’s “modelled” – but if you’re arguing about river flows what else can you do.
If you just wanted the Murray catchment isolated from the MDB you’d need to delineate the catchment boundary feature with GIS upstream major tributaries and do some sort of analysis of interpolated rainfall surfaces (more teeth gnashing by the cynics).
The rough as guts method is probably to take a sample of 20 stations in the catchment and just do the percentile numbers. I could but I’m not sure the blogians would appreciate the effort – you’d still get abused and told you’re “on the take”.
Davey – another 2 mins of googling reveals (apologies to Sid)
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/RainfallAndPastureGrowth/Aus/index.html
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/RainfallAndPastureGrowth/Aus/2000s/2000/Jan/index.html is “an example”
You can get the year sequences out of this.
But it doesn’t hold up analytically – you’ll be accused of being a “decile or percentile adder”. Being a decile adder is very norty (spit over shoulder) and you’d be taken out the back and hit by a Rog-ian wet mullet or 4×2. i.e. if you want a 3 year percentile you can’t just add the 3 annuals together. So for your question you have to get the rainfall total for the area of interest for this period of 10 years and compare it to all the other 10 year sequences in the record.
Thanks for all the work you have put in, Luke. I won’t be following up on the stats – too many other things to do. Clearly the ‘thousand year drought’ claim is unsupported, and probably unsupportable. Kerry O’Brien (O’Brian?) got rather Mike Moorish about it.