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July 18, 2009
A wake was held at Clayton last weekend marking the death of the River Murray. It was held by the River, Lakes and Coorong Action Group (RLCAG) to protest against the building of the temporary flow regulator (a weir) between Hindmarsh Island and Clayton Bay and two others to raise water levels, limiting the exposure of acid sulphate soils to the air.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, abandoned cottage, Point Malcolm,Lake Alexandrina, 2009
The Clayton Bay weir will have the effect of cutting Lake Alexandrina off from the fresh water flows of the Finness River and Currency Creek. The implication is that parts of the Murray river in South Australia which are dying are being let go to ensure the survival of other parts. The crisis in this region is one where we're now in a situation where the Lower Lakes have been emptied out.
In fact everything has been emptied out. There's nowhere else to go, there's no reserves in the system. If the drought continues, there will almost certainly not be adequate fresh water available to maintain the previous state of the Lakes.
If you don’t let the freshwater down to avoid acidification in the lower lakes, then it’s pretty much inevitable that they’ll have to let the saltwater in. We are prepared to use water to keep crops alive that need to be kept alive, if people are to make a living, and plant new crops, but we are not prepared to spend them on buying water to keep the ecology of the Lower Lakes and the Coorong alive. Labor Governments across the country are prepared to sit back and let the Coorong and lower Lakes die to protect their irrigators.
I'm planning a little trip to Broken Hill next week and I'm going to explore what's been happening in the Darling River and the Menindee Lakes in NSW. I suspect that the Menindee Lakes will be dry and the Darling River a series of pools.
The wake should have happened several years ago when the River Murray stopped flowing to the sea a few years. it was then that the fresh water stopped flowing into the Coorong, and then the river mouth closed up completely, so the salt water couldn't get in either, and the Coorong started to dry up. For several years now, there have been dredges at the Murray Mouth, fighting to keep it open, but they can't seem to keep it wide enought or deep enough for a satisfactory amount of water to enter the Coorong. What salt water makes it into the Coorong Channel (the bit between the Murray Mouth and the Coorong proper) cannot make it all the way into the Coorong before the tide turns, and it all flushes out again.
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As the Save the Lakes group say:
They also advocate construction of a weir near Wellington in order to conserve freshwater in the River Murray and protect South Australia's water supply from contamination and the construction of embankments on the Currency and Finniss creeks to conserve freshwater from local rainfalls and preserve these wetlands as local freshwater havens.