It needs to be above politics, bipartisan....a decision will be made in about a year or two when it's too late. It really is an outrage.
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http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/murraydarling-may-be-dead-before-states-act-20080619-2tjg.html
Paul Sinclair
June 20, 2008
Page 1 of 3 | Single Page View
Victoria can do its bit to rescue the Murray. But will it?
IN THE past two days we have had two chilling reminders about the sick state of the Murray-Darling Basin's rivers. On Tuesday, a leaked scientific report that was presented in May to the Victorian Water Minister and the other relevant ministers of the Murray-Darling Basin governments warned that the window of opportunity to prevent ecological collapse in the Murray's Lower Lakes and the internationally acclaimed Coorong will close in spring.
Victoria and the other governments decided to consider the findings of the report after the period the scientists said the Coorong and Lakes would be dead. That is not good enough.
Then yesterday a different study by a panel of ecologists rated the health of 20 of the 23 river valleys in the MurrayDarling Basin as poor or very poor. It said the health of fish populations in more than a third of the 23 rivers was extremely poor.
Today the water level of the Coorong and Lakes is lower than it has been for 7500 years.
Governments, including that of Victoria, need at the very least to assess the various options that might save the
25% of the Coorong that is still functioning.
This area has been one of the world's great wetland systems. It is the ecosystem so many Australians came to know and love through the book and film, Storm Boy and is supposed be protected by international agreements to which Australia is a signatory. Its health is critical to the life of many of our unique waterbirds.
The Narrindjeri people have been sustained by the mixing of the Coorong's fresh and salt waters for thousands of years. Today, thousands of hectares of wetlands in the lower Murray are in danger of turning toxic. In some areas, freshwater has turned to battery acid.
A soil scientist said the only equivalent instance of wetlands turning toxic occurred in Iraq, when Saddam Hussein drained the wetlands to destroy the communities of marsh Arabs.
The Australian Conservation Foundation is asking Victoria and the other Murray-Darling Basin governments to urgently assess options to save the Coorong before the Council of Australian Governments meeting on July 3. There are several options that must be considered before Murray-Darling Basin governments write off the Coorong and Lakes and the wildlife, communities and industries that depend on them.
The Australian Conservation Foundation has suggested the governments look at the feasibility of the following:
â– Reducing allocations to irrigators in the Barwon-Darling Rivers (upstream of the Coorong) who now have 300% of their entitlements.
â– Releasing some of the 1200 billion litres (three times Melbourne's annual water
use) that is stored in private dams in northern NSW.
â– Releasing water from the Menindee Lakes storages on the Darling River.
â– Irrigation industries lending water to the environment.
â– Reducing irrigation allocations by a small percentage at the start of the season.
Surely the governments of the Murray-Darling Basin have the time and resources available to assess these options to give the Coorong a chance. To date, the response of Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding to this crisis has been disturbing.
On the same day the report on the Coorong and Lower Lakes was made public, Victoria issued a progress report on its Water Plan. The plan's focus is massive pipelines and energy-hungry desalination plants.
The crisis facing the river
that runs along three-quarters of the state's northern
border hardly rates a mention.
Holding told the media that governments hadn't been "sitting on their hands" while the river died. "We've also been returning hundreds of billions of litres of water to the Murray River as part of the Living Murray initiative," he told the ABC.
But the truth is the only water being released to a handful of wetlands in Victoria's threatened red-gum forests was allocated to the Murray in 1987.
Most of the water promised by Victoria to the Murray River under the Living Murray Initiative may never be fully delivered even though it cost Victorian taxpayers $100 million. As part of that agreement, Victoria is required to return 214 billion litres to the Murray by 2009.
About 120 billion litres of this water consists of low-security entitlements that may only be available to the river in very wet years. With science telling us climate change is drying out south-eastern Australia, these years are becoming few and far between. On the Goulburn River, for example, scientists predict this class of water may only be available seven years in every hundred.
Holding refuses to buy back water entitlements from irrigators for the Murray River - even though the Federal Government has set aside $1.2 billion over the next four years to buy back water and return it to the river.
Victoria can and must play a more constructive and co-operative role in bringing the Murray back to life. The COAG meeting on July 3 gives it the perfect opportunity to do so.
Dr Paul Sinclair is the Australian Conservation Foundation's healthy ecosystems program manager.
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