NSW stalls water buyback scheme

The link to this article is worth a read.

New South Wales, where a study by the University of New South Wales showed that there are over 2,500kms of illegal levees and dams just in NSW. Oh please this complete abuse of Power is absolutely disgusting. Why has a Government ignored this illegal abuse and now condones their actions further by pure "bloody minded" belligerence.

The Federal Government must act now and take control of all Water Allocation of the Nations Major River System.

Water Trading - should it be stopped?

I am not going to be making a lot of friends with this one and I would also like to hear from anyone who reads this in the form of a comment or opinion.

It is my humble opinion that water trading is indeed the one thing that has finally exacerbated the whole dilemma of the Murray Darling Basin and should be suspended immediately.

It is also my opinion that the water of the system belongs to the Crown. Any property certainly has an asset in the form of the allocation that attaches to that property and the allocation may well be able to be transferred with the property itself. The asset takes the form of that property being able to draw an allocation from the River. I am not sure how this license ever became a tradeable commodity.

If a property ceases to operate or draw from the River then I believe that the License to draw water reverts to the Crown.

So why do I believe this - the infrastructure that has been built that allows for the Rivers to flow has been built by Governments and therefore funded by the Crown and therefore the Taxpayer. The Government therefore owns all of the water and only allows a license.

The day that we allowed the water trade to take effect was the day that the over allocation took its toll. Water that had been allocated and not used was now being drawn from the River.

It is therefore my strong opinion that a) Water Trading should cease forthwith, and b)all Water should revert to Crown ownership and all parties that draw from the River should reapply for a license to draw water based on demonstrable need.The allocation can then be allocated on a much more equitable and workable basis.

The problem areas will be quickly identified and there may well be a need to assist those that have acquired massive amounts of water to extricate themselves from debt and seek to change the income earning structures that have been falsely allowed to grow in areas where perhaps they should not. In truth it is the only way we can possibly return an equitable use of this limited resource. The need to protect the environment and economy can indeed work but it will need only occur if decisive action is taken.

I encourage you to comment on this article.

Watch this and weep

Regina Durbridge - "The Summerhouse" has produced a number of Videos regarding the lower lakes of the River Murray - I can do little more than invite you to view this.

Then I can ask you to write, ring every Politician you know and more importantly to contact South Australia's elected representative in the Senate. Senator Penny Wong is first and foremost elected by the voters of South Australia and must now listen to her electorate and do something more than to sit and watch this disaster unfold before our eyes.

Budget allocated hardly any new money for River Murray

The above is a headline from the Adelaide Advertiser and is available to read in the Shared Items alongside this blog. I remain absolutely aghast and it is time that the population of Australia started to deliver the message more aggressively.

Channels like the one that appear in the heading of this blog are literally covering the Murray Darling Basin in Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales. South Australia removed their Channels some 30 years ago. The saving in lost water from evaporation and seepage would indeed go a long way to reinstating environmental flow, as a minimum, to the River Systems. Infrastructure programs to put these channels into pipes, incentive programmes to encourage better farm practice and incentive programs to remove agriculture and horticulture that require flood irrigation techniques would go even further to correcting the problem.

The employment opportunities in creating these infrastructure programmes are enormous and the benefit to Australia's GDP even greater.

The dozen's of projects that have been presented to the Murray Darling Basin Authority, over decades, to further consider environmentally friendly Flood Mitigation Programmes from Northern Rivers that would again deliver more than enough water to the basin have fallen on deaf ears for too long.

We must bring this matter to the urgent attention of the Prime Minister, Senator Penny Wong and Peter Garrett MHR and it is time that they actually did something about fixing this crisis