Always Fresh, Did Ya Know?

This week we heard from the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) as they aim to settle the science once and for all on the South Australian Lower Lakes.

The MDBA is in charge of the $13,000,000,000 plan to restore the ‘balance’ and provide the best available science to deliver this promise. It’s a tall order, different points of view across the basin at least we can rest assured they are doing a good job, you only need to read their reports or the reports of the independent reviewers the MDBA employ using the MDBA’s terms of reference to sleep easy that the $13,000,000,000 is being spent well and a triple bottom line is in tack. Sorry scrap that, there is no triple bottom line. As Phillip Glyde said at senate estimates “there are “winners and losers”. But it’s ok they still are using the best available science, aren’t they?

This week the MDBA held an online presentation to hear, as Phillip Glyde crowed “the lakes have always been fresh” “we hope this puts the matter to bed”.

How did all those learned scholars of yesteryear get it so wrong? The former regulatory body of the basin the Murray Darling Basin Commission listed the lower lakes as an estuary, sometimes fresh, sometimes salty. I’m surprised we could even build a country at all if the old scholars were this loose with such fundamentals!

We then had the Murray Darling Basin Plan which listed the lower lakes as an estuary but with freshwater targets. Freshwater targets are legislated targets for the MDBA to follow. Targets like the Murray Mouth must be kept open without the need for dredging 95% years with freshwater flows, or the target of holding the lake above sea level.

Now we have this independent review and guess what, it was never even an estuary! It has always been fresh! Amazing, who would have thought we have the only freshwater estuary in the world! Someone call the media, it’s a world first! The ABC then threw out an article and the first few quotes were interesting

‘An independent review of scientific studies about the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth has found the weight of evidence shows it was a freshwater ecosystem before European settlement.’

‘A series of barrages, completed in 1940, sits between Lake Alexandrina and the ocean to keep seawater out of the lakes.’

Turns out, the pioneers didn’t need to build that 7.6km of barrages that hold back the Southern Ocean and ended the Mulloway fishing industry within the lakes after all.

Even the Wentworth group had an article on the lower lakes in the Sydney Morning Herald this week, here is one quote

Jamie Pittock, a professor at ANU"s Fenner School of Environment and an author of the Wentworth report, said the failure to model coastal sand movements was "a big oversight and it means the main basin plan targets are unachievable".

One Facebook user attempted to enlightened me as to how it has gone from fresh to requiring the barrages “it was because of over-extraction between settlement and the barrage construction.”

We could consider the Mulloway or the SA fishing reports or newspaper articles from the 1930s or maybe Sturt's accounts of brackish water, seals or maybe the shark skeleton I saw as a kid from the Adelaide pumping station at a museum?

No don’t be silly, it was over-extraction! How prevalent were big horsepower machines? I’ll give you a tip- Australia rode on the sheep’s back! Yes, there were pumps, steam was alive and well but not in great numbers and it was manual labour for most tasks.

Then there’s the greater question in a country of drought and flooding rain, what provided consistent flows to keep the southern ocean at bay before dams, weirs and locks?

The 2016 flood provide 65,000megs past lock 1, lock one was effectively underwater, the MDBA even had photos in their reports. This lock exceeding flow held the mouth open for…….. 10 days!

Ok, maybe I’m being flippant on such an important issue, can someone please check the historic rainfall figures to demonstrate we had consistent rain to keep the sea at bay. I’m sure if the rainfall figures don’t demonstrate it, maybe one of those computer models can. Like the models, they used to set water targets, like the models for our flood plains and how much water returned to the river or stayed in the ‘Edward Wakool Basin’, you know a basin as in a depression, were creeks and billabongs form. Every person I have contacted have never had answers or access to that modelling data, people far smarter then I who have been involved in the community consultation have never had access to the information that forms the extractions from our regions!

Maybe the floods just stayed in the forests? Maybe all those flood banks they built did not need to be there?

Who knows? I’m lost, I have to fill out every conceivable piece of paper and tax return and milestone reviews to access a $5,000 grant but the wheel in a $13,000,000,000 “train wreck” as Maryanne Slattery former water specialist for the MDBA described the plan, and you can do no wrong! You can reshape history, science, gravity and hydrodynamics! The best part is you review yourself!

As I sat and photographed the river this week the water height reminds me of something?

It is the height our part of the river runs under Murray Darling Basin Plan changes. I am not blaming environmental water, not blaming South Australia and I'm not, but you also couldn't geographically really blame rice or cotton.

It is not about blame, it's a symptom of a problem. John Howard said he wanted to achieve a triple bottom line of a healthy environment, healthy communities and healthy industries have been hijacked and the people who made the mess certainly do not want anyone to look at it.

The river is currently this high due to flood water. As the season cools down water and with good rainfall demand drops and the river has been low. Now with all the changes during the warmer months, this has been a very consistent height of the river. If this is the new river operational river height is it a combination of increased downstream demand, environmental water, water trading, flawed science and will have huge environmental damage.

We need your help, I do not want more water purchased back, I don't want more than our fair share, I just want answers to why…

Why do we have foreign government water ownership, food security concerns, politicians not declaring water interests as the government buys water and make rule changes (HUGE conflict of interest?), the draining of Menindee Lakes and the fish kills, the expansion of flood plain harvesting, on-farm efficiency works that lead to increased extraction and huge windfalls for corporate operations, water trading but people driven by profit, not the ability to feed their stock or save their crop, the decimation of whole communities and industries, environmental watering operations that have no accountability, a whole program that is implemented by, run by and reported on by the same Murray Darling Basin Authority.

The pollies come and go, Littleproud, Scott Morrison, Penny Wong, Keith Pitt. The water managers and their staff come and go. It is you and I that remain, we are the ones invested. Our industries like citrus, rice, dairy, sheep, timber are all effected, our schools effected, our sports clubs affected, our hospitals effected, our voting electorate effected.

There is countless people spend thousands of hours reading and submitting feedback to people who now think we will swallow the world’s first freshwater estuary, I’m not the quickest of cats but to quote the popular vernacular “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining”

You can help. Flick an email to your members of parliament, tweet them or Facebook them.

We need a Federal Royal Commission and it needs to end the corruption, the bullying, the dividing of communities, states, and commodity groups. So many damaging reports already exist so why don't we have A PLAN WITH A TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE OF GOOD FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT, OUR COMMUNITIES AND OUR JOBS