LEFT FOR DEAD OR A NEW LIFE?

Yesterday the federal water minister, Penny Wong, made an announcement. I was devastated, at first, as will many people be in South Australia. There is not enough water in the Murray River system to save the Lower Lakes. The weir will have to be built which will cut off the whole river from the lakes and the sea in order to have enough water for the people in the towns and cities, like Adelaide.

I have said many times before, as have many of the people, this is highlighted but not caused by the drought. The problems are with the overallocation of water licenses to enormous agri-businesses like Cubby Station where cotton is grown in what would otherwise be a desert, because they have been allowed to capture water from Queensland and hold it in dams equalling or exceeding the size of the whole of the Sydney harbour! Check it out on Google earth...Sydney harbour is a huge waterway. Imagine filling this with rainwater and keeping it for just one totally ridiculous venture when thousands of small irrigators all the way down the rest of the river and all the towns along the shores, have no water at all.

The loss of local food production alone is adding to the shortage of many things locally and to the increase of prices. In an era when we should be encouraging local everything possible, the opposite is happening with more food than ever coming from interstate and overseas. Just as an aside...I saw chanterelle mushrooms at the market last week with a sign proudly stating " flown in fresh from France"! At another stall I bought chanterelle mushrooms from a man who collects them himself from a local pine forest in the hills!

So either this whole lake system succumbs to the environmental collapse I wrote about a little while ago or they let the sea water back in and allow it to revert to how it was before the barrages went in about 80 years ago. Sure, this will ruin it in the short term for the local dairy farms but it is better than ruining it for 10,000 years for the whole environment. Actually, I think it could be good for tourism to have this whole are refreshed by sea water and let all the wildlife come back and use it as it was always used, as one of the prime nesting places for water birds as well as being a breeding ground for native fish etc. It was wonderful, for example, to go down to the Coorong, as we did a few years ago, and see the islands that are used as breeding grounds by thousands of pelicans, through a telescope set up in a little hut by National Parks and Wildlife. This sanctaury is currently under threat with the current situation. There is not another such breeding ground of this magnitude for thousnads of kilometres.

Moreover, the government announced that a new pipeline would be built to the dairying area to bring water from further up the river.... whether this is viable I don't know but it seems like a win:win situation to me. So, I am hopeful that this will be done and that the Lower Lakes will benefit from all this turmoil and become a wonderful wildlife refuge and scenic wonderland again and not be left to the consequences of acid sulphate.