The heavy rain in south-eastern Australia might have flooded some houses and damaged some crops, but it’s doing wonders for the health of the Murray-Darling. Water is flowing into the Coorong again. The overallocation of irrigation water in the system hasn’t gone away, and the predictions of the long-term effects of climate change on the Murray-Darling remain as dire as ever.
Let’s be grateful for ths temporary respite. But it doesn’t mean the pressure can go off governments. The problems the Basin faces will surely be back.
Great news for the lower lakes and tributaries around the southern slopes of the Adelaide Hills. I hope now that it will not engender a false sense of security in the areas that have been over allocated water entitlements. Irrigation I observe in my traveling, from the Victorian border to Tailem Bend, has transformed a former desert at what cost.
Agree, this is a respite but the structural problems of overallocation of water in the Murray Darling Basin still remain. Looking forward to seeing what Lake Hume looks like with water in it.
So am I – I’m going up there this weekend
If anyone’s interested in keeping track of flows and storage levels in most of the Basin this is a good site.
http://waterinfo.nsw.gov.au/drr/index.shtml
The Hume has risen 13% in the last week to be at 68% now.
The long-term impact of the Alpine and Great Divide fires on Lakes Hume and Dartmouth cannot be readily forgotten either. As the forested upper catchments regrow, there’s going to be a massive reduction in flows for the next several decades.
“The overallocation of irrigation water in the system hasn’t gone away ….”
Firstly the good news, ‘my’ lagoon is back, sort of, shallow but at least got some water in it.
Thats great.
And more water to come from the floods, nature mitigating the damage its doing upstream by doing good down here.
But I have a little story.
‘Carry over water’.
When you are an irrigator and quota restrictions mean you can’t use all of the water that your licence in one year allows you can apply to have the unused portion from that year added to your quota the following year.
Nice eh?
For irrigators that is.
Not so nice from the point of view of the river if the water is not stored and the next year is not a flood because then that extra portion of allocation plus normal allocation will empty the river again.
But why plan ahead?
The cute thing is that the water dept has twice in the last few months sent me official notices informing me that my application [which incidentally is administrative cost free] for ‘carry over water’ was successful and I have been allocated an extra 17 million [from memory] litres.
Nice eh?
Particularly nice if the water in my lagoon was deep enough for me to be able to pump.
But it isn’t so its all academic.
But here’s the second cute aspect.
I didn’t apply.
They just gave it to me.
To me, not the river.
Isn’t that nice of them?
And the number is wrong, I dunno how they arrived at that number, the formula they use gives an entirely different amount.
Oh well.
Anyway I contacted them [I got onto the person whose name was at the bottom of the letter] and pointed out that I hadn’t applied and was curious as to why I received extra water over and above my licence allocation for this year.
But they didn’t know why.
I didn’t pursue the matter.
And then last week I got another letter.
Same thing.
Except the extra water has increased to 197 million litres.
I wonder how much extra water all the other irrigators are getting?
Its a mad mad world.
It’s also particularly poignant at a time when the bought media is whining that the govt has been buying back “imaginary water” that’s only available at times like… well, right now.
Carryover is a vital tool for managing water needs in times of restrictions. Many irrigators need to buy short term water depending on their restricted allocations and it is far from an exact science.
Allocations often start the irrigation season at very low figures such as 1% or 5% with the MDBA providing charts on probability which one has to wade through to decide how much to buy, if and when. The outlook could be pretty poor at the end of the melt so growers start buying water. A good rain event later which increases allocations could make these expensive purchases unnecessary in the season they were aquired so this water, which is stored in Dartmouth or one of the other big dams, is left there until the next season when the irrigator can factor this reserve into his calculations for the new season.
I chose not to buy water, instead shutting off some old oranges which could not justify buying in water given the poor market situation. The water saving was a reserve in the same way as bought water.
What I do not know is what will happen to our carryover when the drought is declared over but I assume it will dissolve.
Perhaps too we should be continuing to question the wisdom of maintaining two very large lakes that used to be tidal as freshwater lakes? (High evaporation losses for????) and the reduction in tidal flow into and out of these lakes would have been contributing to the sanding up of the river mouth and the build-up of salty water in the Coorong.
Perhaps too we could have a rational conversation about the relative merits of running scarce water all the way along the Darling evaporation channel from Qld to SA for use by SA irrigators vs using the water in Qld?
Just because we have been stupid for years doesn’t mean that we have to keep on being stupid.
Perhaps while we are having this conversation we could explode a couple of fallacies and myths along the way?
Like:
Murray irrigation is ‘efficent” – there is nothing efficient about spraying water onto land in searing summer temperatures and drying winds to grow water hungry crops in the wrong place, semi desert, so a few people of enormous political clout can make lots of money and cause others to go without water at a cost of billions of dollars whilst simultaneously depriving the river of naturaly invigorating environmental flows?
That evaporation is somehow not an natural process and that we will convenienly omit to mention that evaporation by channel and spray irrigation waste hundred of billions of litres of water,or more, annually that never gets to the roots of crops but does add salt and other toxic materials to the river by infiltration of the remaining polluted water back into the river which later has to be removed by the tax payer at costs of millions of dollars per year.
Thats a direct subsidy.
That those that complain that the irrigators are not getting the water ‘lost’ by the natural process of evaporation from the river surfaces accidentally forget to mention that the river has been controlled and managed partly at least for the benefit of the irrigators at huge costs to the public?
And finally, most importantly, that those that promote the idea of continuing to destroy the river are promulgating such for the benefit of a few people whose personal wealth is considered more important than other river users, urban, domestic, recreation, tourist, industrial and …the river itself?
Until the problem of overallocation of irrigation water that belongs to all Australians and the river itself is confronted this problem of the destruction of a major heritage and icon of all Australians will continue.
We need to stop the debate being presented in those terms favoured by the few who are holding the river to ransom.
Because sooner or later the overallocation, exacerbated by declining water inflows caused by climate change will render the present trend .. to borrow a word….unsustainable.
Just because we have been stupid, narrow minded, greedy and selfish for decades doesn’t mean we have to contiue that way until the crunch arrives again.