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November 24, 2008
A report by CSIRO on ground and surface water resources in the Murray-Darling Basin warns that climate change will threaten already strained resources in the Basin. It says:
The south of the MDB was in severe drought from 1997 to 2006 and the catchment runoff in the southernmost parts of the MDB was the lowest on record. This event would occur once in more than 300 years without climate change. Such conditions will become increasingly common. The drought conditions in the south of the MDB have worsened in 2007 and 2008.
Though the impacts of climate change by 2030 are uncertain the report says that surface water availability across the entire MDB is more likely to decline than to increase and that a decline in the south of the MDB is more likely than in the north. The six most accurate climate change models predict a drier future for the southern part of the basin than the full range of models:
Under the median 2030 climate, diversions in driest years would fall by more than 10 percent in most New South Wales regions, around 20 percent in the Murrumbidgee and Murray regions and from around 35 to over 50 percent in the Victorian regions. Under the dry extreme 2030 climate, diversions in driest years would fall by over 20 percent in the Condamine- Balonne, around 40 to 50 percent in New South Wales regions (except the Lachlan), over 70 percent in the Murray and 80 to 90 percent in the major Victorian regions.
The report predicts that by 2030 there will 50% less water flowing at the end of the catchment ----the Murray Mouth end in South Australia ---- than now, if the climate change conditions of the past ten years continue. It says that there will be increased use of groundwater even though current groundwater usage is unsustainable in seven of the twenty high-use groundwater areas in the MDB. Surely the Murray-Darling Basin Authority will set caps on future surface and groundwater use.
Why then is the Brumby Government in Victoria building a pipeline to take water from the Victorian part of the Murray River for Melbourne? It is from that threatened southern Murray-Darling Basin that 75 billion litres will be diverted down the Goulburn pipeline to Melbourne. The State Government is investing $1 billion in new irrigation infrastructure in the hope of stemming the amount of water that is "lost" each year, and thus keeping both farmers and city domestic consumers happily supplied.
Sure Melbourne's water storages are at 33.3 per cent capacity compared to 40.2 per cent at the same time last year and the threat to move to stage 4 water restrictions, under which all outdoor watering would be banned, looms. But why that pipeline option instead of capturing storm water and recycled water? Why is the Commonwealth Government merely looking on whilst this happens? Why did it agree to this pipeline?
The Brumby Government and the water policymakers are not willing to encourage urban and regional water re-use when they have committed large chunks of money to a questionable pipeline and an expensive desalination plant with its high cost of water. Isn't it about time it started looking at reducing the amount of land used for irrigated agriculture (which consumes 77 per cent of the state's water) rather than continuing to prop up uneconomic irrigation farms?
At some point the Commonwealth Government is going to have to take some serious steps to making the irrigation practices in the Murray Darling Basin more sustainable. One step requires pressuring the states to prevent the projected rise in ground water.
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Please make it stop Gary.
I am so tired of watching this river die and nobody doing anything about and in fact simply ignoring it apart from platitudes.
Recently I was involved in a major baseline survey of bird species in the wetlands of the lower Murray. The survey counted species along about a hundred kms of lagoons. Nothing there. Virtually no wetland species birds, a mere handful except at 2 places, one a mere puddle and the other artificially maintained.
The death of an ecosystem.