"NO TIME FOR BEATING CHESTS" says WONG

Well I have not written for a while and am so fed up with Politicians doing nothing.

I would like to pose a question for Senator Wong - a resident of South Australia. If the good Penny owned a property in the Adelaide Hills and decided the lovely creek running through her property would solve all of her personal issues and dammed the creek. Dammed it so well that water very rarely flowed past her property.

Let me assure her that the laws of this state would instantly require removal of the dam or at least release of sufficient water to allow her creek to flow.

The fact that Cubbie Station holds 530,000 gigalitres of water on its own is stunning. That is the entire Water drawn for Irrigation in the State of South Australia. Let us not also forget that Cubbie is but one of these massive storage facilities now located at the top end of the Darling.

Also as per previous articles written here the University of NSW did a survey of the Murray Darling Basin and found over 2000kms of illegal Dams and levees throughout the system. Why are these not being forcibly removed.

The fact that Cubbie even has a value is largely due to the Queensland Government rushing through legislation five minutes before they handed control to the Federal Government simply to protect the evil that had already been done. Please the motherhood statements being uttered by the Queensland Premier I found rather cynical I am afraid.

Senator Wong there is a solution but it requires strong action from Government to ensure that everyone including the Aussie Battler gets a fair go.

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.

Station to send 90bn litres down Murray

This is an amazing step. Congratulations. The only way to allow enough water is to stop this kind of mass storage. If we have to buy the farm, so to speak, then so be it. There are so many properties in these areas that are harvesting water and not allowing the natural flow of the River.

Please read this article and you will agree that this is a strategy that has been absolutely pushed by this blog since I started writing.

Thank you at last a step in the right direction - now lets move on to the next one. The more of this kind of action will see a terrific move to a happy healthy river system, and the surrounding economic communities will benefit.

We still need to consider how to harvest flood waters from the Northern Rivers as well. I stress only flood waters. If this water can be redirected inland rather than allowed to go out to sea then we will be protecting the overall production that has been built around our River Systems.

Take Control of all Water Allocations

Professor Mike Young has today told the Senate Committee that just buying water is not the answer. The allocations down stream will just eat it all up.Rfere to the attached article "No Extra Water In sight"

Until the Federal Government takes control of all Water Allocations under Emergency Powers the folly that the State Governments have so brilliantly overseen cannot be undone.

The massive water storage facilities in the upstream environment have to be let go - and the downstream draw then has to managed very carefully. If each irrigator was allowed an emergency allocation of the flow that could be created the management of environment, Crops, livelihood and the economy I believe could be brought back to sustainable flow for all participants.

Professor Young and his "Wentworth Group" cohorts have been saying this stuff for years now and still nothing.

Please hear what is being said and step in and do the right thing.

And now the Greens want to add the CSIRO

The Greens are astounded why CSIRO has not been directly involved in this disaster.I am too - why hasn't our leading Scientific Research body been incorporated in this process. Indeed why haven't "the Wentworth Group" been included. The cluster of talent that is just not being utilised is criminal.

The important part of this is nothing has been done. A lot of the land that is under irrigation was originally part of soldier settlement programs and we encouraged them to grow Citrus and Grapes etc. Now we choose to desert these families and destroy a lifetime of work.

What has happened is Governments have continued to rape the Golden Goose and have significantly over allocated the River resource. We have allowed bulk storage of water that has now shut down River flow but still there are massive amounts of water being collected and stored at the headwater.

The "johnny come lately's" in the upper reaches of the Darling etc who have only in the relatively recent past been storing massive amounts of water in new dams and have really changed the whole face of the river system and the agriculture of these previous pastoral only regions.

Please let's not just add another layer of administrative static now. Let the water go from these massive storage facilities and let people along the river use what allocation they really need to survive. The surplus will fix the environmental issues and proper management of allocation can be installed if only the Federal Government will act instead of continuing to pay lip service to the issues at hand.

I would hate to consider the mental health issues that this continued "head in the sand attitude" is causing and wonder if statistics of family breakdown and suicide can be directly attributed to this disaster are being kept.

Political tokenism is way past its use by date and action must happen NOW!!!!

The Federal Government to spend another $400million

So again Senator Wong announces a further $400 million to buy back water. She hopes that it will add to the already acquired 39 billion litres of water already acquired.

I am not sure why Penny keeps talking in Billions of litres when the normal nomenclature along the River is megalitres.A cynical man might believe that talking billions makes it sound lots. So 39,000 megalitres have been acquired which is only about one third of what is required. $400million what will it buy and will it only force up the price for those who are trying to survive downstream.

The upstream problems are mainly caused by Bulk Storage in dams away from the River. This problem is still not being addressed. Any kind of drawing that is holding water in Dams away from the river for future proofing must be stopped. If the crop protection requires that kind of mass storage then it should not be allowed. Draw water as it passes by - the River has already put in place locks etc to assist in flow management and we the taxpayers have paid for all of that infrastructure.

Let the water in these private storage facilities go - take back control of allocations and the irrigators and towns who require water can then draw what they need as it passes - frankly capturing water, with as much as three years supply being held in some of these privately owned storage facilities, apart from being an environmental disaster is simply un-Australian. The need to manage water only as it flows by and travels the length of the river I am sure will give us back an appropriate amount of water for now. Then we look at supplemental flows like flood mitigation of Northern Rivers.