This drying continent can't afford Adani's pipeline to 12.5 billion litres of precious water

Having lived next to the Liverpool Plains and farmed in that region for many years, I’m only too aware of the ravages of drought and declining water resources on much of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Conservationists question whether artesian water 
taken from boreholes will harm the fragile 
Doongmabulla Springs near Adani's Carmichael coal mine.

Dry times come and go but one thing is for sure: there is a bigger player in Australia’s weather systems than the El Niсo siblings – climate change. Our top scientists are predicting that eastern Australia is only going to get less and more intermittent rainfall as our planet heats up.

Ignoring the recent warning signs – unprecedented drought and bushfire – and carrying on as normal is to risk vast areas of Australia.

At the last federal election the Coalition weaponised the Adani coal-mine issue to portray Labor as having a tin-ear for the concerns of regional Australia. But for all the bravado, the simple truth is that Adani will not be the saviour of regional Queensland. Far from it.

Read the opinion piece from The Sydney Morning Herald by Tony Windsor -  “This drying continent can't afford Adani's pipeline to 12.5 billion litres of precious water.”

Murray-Darling Basin in 'most severe' two-to-three year drought conditions in 120 years of records, BOM says

Every drought is different, but when it comes to the current drought conditions across the Murray-Darling Basin, BOM says it is now "the most severe in 120 years of records".

The drought is dragging on in the Murray-Darling
Basin, and spring is unlikely to break it.

In a presentation yesterday, climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, Dr David Jones, said that the Federation drought (1891-1903) and the World War II drought were similar to this one.

The variable nature of droughts makes them hard to compare as everyone experiences drought differently, and not everywhere is currently experiencing its worst drought.

Read the ABC News story by Kate Doyle - “Murray-Darling Basin in 'most severe' two-to-three year drought conditions in 120 years of records, BOM says.”

Murray-Darling consensus needed after years of governments muddying waters

When our new environment minister, Sussan Ley, suggested last week that farmers in the Murray-Darling Basin should be allowed to "borrow" water intended for maintaining the health of the basin's ecosystem, she faithfully applied the lessons of this year's federal and state elections in the region of her rural NSW seat of Farrer.

Like the Liberal governments in each of those elections, Ms Ley was returned to office - but she also saw dramatic swings away from the Coalition in her constituency, swings that have a great deal to do with farmers who feel that there is no justice for them in the current dispensation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and its allocation of flows to the environment. For farmers in the upstream states of Queensland and NSW who depend on irrigation, the need to "Pause the Plan" has become an article of faith as the current drought has bitten.

Read the Editorial from The Age - “Murray-Darling consensus needed after years of governments muddying waters."

Murray-Darling Basin could be missing billions of litres of water, study claims

Hundreds of billions of litres of water is missing from the Murray-Darling Basin, according to a new report.

Billions of dollars has been spent trying to restore
water to the Murray-Darling Basin river system.

An Australian National University (ANU) study claimed the Federal Government had grossly exaggerated the amount of water being returned to the system via water savings.

The recovered water was meant to boost environmental flows.

Co-author Professor John Williams said the lack of water may be a contributing factor in ecological issues affecting the river.

Read the story from ABC News by Rachel Carbonell, Tom Iggulden and Jesse Davies - “Murray-Darling Basin could be missing billions of litres of water, study claims.”

‘Drought, climate change and mismanagement': What experts think caused the death of a million Menindee fish

The sight of more than a million fish floating belly up on the Darling River at Menindee has thrown doubt over the management of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Piles a dead fish have been removed from the river at Menindee.

Experts say irrigators are taking too much water from the system, and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has mismanaged water flows.

But New South Wales Water Minister Niall Blair says drought is to blame.

With more fish likely to die, here's what we know about the mass deaths and what some independent experts have had to say.

Read the story from ABC News by Nick Kilvert - “‘Drought, climate change and mismanagement': What experts think caused the death of a million Menindee fish.”

Research reveals the story of Australian waterbirds the length and breadth of the Murray-Darling Basin

EIGHTEEN months ago a group of scientists started tagging and tracking Straw-necked Ibis in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Straw-necked Ibis pictured at Macquarie Marshes in NSW. 

At the time, they knew that more effective environmental water management depended on better knowledge about the movements of these birds.

What they didn’t expect was that the ibis would become more than dots on a map or the basis of integral research – they would become story-tellers, as unique individuals with their own experiences, adventures and lessons to learn.

This year, this collection of stories has increased with GPS satellite transmitters having tracked 40 straw-necked Ibis, 15 Royal Spoonbills and five Australian White Ibis.

Read the CSIRO blog - “Research reveals the story of Australian waterbirds the length and breadth of the Murray-Darling Basin.”

Murray-Darling Basin communities should carefully guard the region’s reputation as a food producer, and that means protecting the rivers, prominent chef and businessman Stefano de Pieri said on a visit to the Goulburn Valley.

He was speaking in support of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, following recent criticism and speculation that the 450 Gl of ‘upwater’ may not be delivered if socio-economic impacts were considered too great.

Well-known chef Stefano De Pieri is worried
the Murray-Darling Basin Plan will be
compromised, which he believes will
 be to the detriment of the region.

Mr de Pieri pointed to examples around the world where food production areas had been decimated by poor environmental management, leaving the regions with a poor reputation.

While Australia was developing a clean and green image for food production, he warned this reputation could be put at risk if the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was not supported.

Asked about critics who suggest he should stick to cooking and leave the water plan to others, the restauranteur said with a smile, ‘‘everyone who eats becomes a food critic’’.

‘‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

‘‘If your food comes from an environment that has been compromised, it is likely to lose its value.’’

Mr de Pieri has a food business in Mildura and has published a book, A Gondola on the Murray, which became a television series.

A University of Melbourne graduate, Mr de Pieri has been critical of farmers and the Victorian Government for their approach to the basin plan and has cast doubt on reports that attribute job losses to the loss of water from irrigation districts.

He believes the vagaries of the commodity markets have more to do with the economics of farming fortunes.

‘‘People are undermining the plan and making it die of a thousand cuts.’’

Mr de Pieri was critical of Federal Agriculture and Water Resources Minister Barnaby Joyce, who he said talked about supporting the plan at the same time as casting doubt on whether the full amount of water could be delivered to the environment.

He pointed to a recent report on the diminishing bird life across the basin and said the loss of such wildlife was a tragedy for future generations and impossible to quantify.

Mr de Pieri visited Shepparton recently to speak to hospitality students in the Cooking for a Better Future program.

This story is in today’s Country News by editor, Geoff Adams - “Chef says don’t burn the plan.”

Murray-Darling: testing times expected as extended dry period approaches

Farmers and nature have been at odds in the Murray-Darling Basin ever since the first European settlers, desperate for water, found that river flows were unreliable and out of sync with their needs.

Water bird populations have dropped
two-thirds from 1980s levels. 

"For would-be irrigators the problem with the River Murray was that the bulk of the annual flow occurred at the wrong time of year," Daniel Connell, a research fellow at the Australian National University, notes in his book Water and Politics in the Murray-Darling Basin.

"The time of peak flows under natural conditions in the rivers of southern Australia is winter and spring but the main growing season when agriculture needs water is the late summer and autumn. 

Even draining Australia's three longest rivers – the Darling, Murray and Murrumbidgee – over 1 million square kilometres, flows are also highly variable. The biggest year, 1956, saw volumes 17 times the worst, in 2006.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Murray-Darling: testing times expected as extended dry period approaches.”

Murray-Darling: testing times expected as extended dry period approaches

Farmers and nature have been at odds in the Murray-Darling Basin ever since the first European settlers, desperate for water, found that river flows were unreliable and out of sync with their needs.

"For would-be irrigators the problem with the River Murray was that the bulk of the annual flow occurred at the wrong time of year," Daniel Connell, a research fellow at the Australian National University, notes in his book Water and Politics in the Murray-Darling Basin.

"The time of peak flows under natural conditions in the rivers of southern Australia is winter and spring but the main growing season when agriculture needs water is the late summer and autumn. 

Even draining Australia's three longest rivers – the Darling, Murray and Murrumbidgee – over 1 million square kilometres, flows are also highly variable. The biggest year, 1956, saw volumes 17 times the worst, in 2006.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Murray-Darling: testing times expected as extended dry period approaches.”

Ten-year wait for Murray-Darling Basin Plan southern review.”

-      Robert McLean

The Murray-Darling Basin is known
as the food bowl of Australia.

Water and climate change are intricately linked.

Climate change is not going to lessen the amount of fresh water in the world but will have a significant impact on its distribution, that is where the rain falls and the intensity with which it falls.

That is critical for Australia for, beyond Antarctica, it is the driest continent in the world and so as the population increases so does our consumption of water.

Much of Australia’s population lives one the east and south coasts and those people, although many don’t realize it, look to the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) to ensure urban communities, our rural towns, and primary industries, along with thousands of species can survive and prosper.

The MDB stretches from Queensland, through New South Wales, feeds and waters Victoria, and finally South Australia until the River Murray empties into the ocean.

The “basin plan” as it is called, has long been at heart of passionate and convoluted debate and conversation with some in southern parts arguing that those in southern Queensland and northern and western New South Wales are taking inordinate amounts of water for personal enrichment at the expense of those in southern parts of the basin who would normally benefit from natural unimpeded flows south.

The predicted 10-year wait for a review to the MDB plan is simply too long as climate change, albeit slow, is moving more quickly than that.

Read the latest on the MDB from the ABC - “Ten-year wait for Murray-Darling Basin Plan southern review.”

The lessons we need to learn to deal with the ‘creeping disaster’ of drought

Droughts are an understood and
accepted part of the Australian
condition, but the recent decade-long
'big dry' was surely a wake-up call.
 

Droughts are a natural feature of the Australian environment. But the Millennium drought (or “Big Dry”), which ran from 1997 to 2010, was a wake-up call even by our parched standards.

The Millennium drought had major social, economic and environmental impacts. It triggered water restrictions in major cities, and prompted severe reductions in irrigation allocations throughout the vast Murray-Darling Basin.

The Millennium drought also highlighted that, compared to the rest of the world, the impacts of drought on Australia’s society and economy are particularly severe. This is mainly because our water storage and supply systems were originally designed by European settlers who failed to plan for the huge variability in Australia’s climate.

Read the piece on The Conversation by an Associate Professor of Hydroclimatology at the University of Newcastle, Anthony Kiem; a Senior Lecturer at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of New South Wales, Fiona Johnson; and an Associate Professor with the School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering at the University of Adelaide, Seth Westra - “The lessons we need to learn to deal with the ‘creeping disaster’ of drought.”