A few comments if I may re the letter supplied by Marcus Beresford in response to Kate Jennings’ article (‘Water Under the Bridge’, October). I will ignore Marcus’ opening reflections as to the “green bashing” of Jenning’s article as a bit of attention seeking and “finger pointing”. Remarks best left unsaid.
Marcus has no understanding at all of how extractions are controlled by “allocations”. The numbers quoted relate to the aggregate of all license entitlements. In any year an entitlement holder is issued an extraction figure (allocation) as a percentage of his or her entitlement, depending on the available resource (water in storage). In the 2009–10 season, the latest year for which figures are available, extractions totalled 3500 gigalitres, out of a total licensed entitlement in the region of 11,500 gigalitres, or 30%. To talk about removing 7600 gigalitres from industry for the environment, well in 2009–10, industry did forego that, and more, for the environment, and continue to do so, without a MDBA plan, under present arrangements.
In a low rainfall environment, without river management, the Murray Darling system dries up; historically, when this happened, sea water flowed into the lower end of the system. This was the reason for the barrages. The barrages were put in place through decisions made in South Australia and, rightly, any decision on their future should be made by the people of SA. Marcus incorrectly quotes the SA entitlement as some 1500 gigalitres per year when the correct figure is 1850 gigalitres per year under the tri-state agreement. The 850 gigalitres figure is around the aggregate SA entitlement. The 1000 gigalitres difference is the evaporation that occurs from the Lower Lakes. If SA were to allow sea water to return to the Lower Lakes they could have saved the necessity to spend the $1 billion on a desalination plant. As an aside, if they had spent the $1 billion on High Security entitlement, they could have bought about 220+ gigalitres, which would have given an asset that could be traded when not required, and been productive, as against a depreciating, high-maintenance asset that will be a continuing drain on the SA budget and will only be called on occasionally in a lifetime.
Marcus mentions the Coorong and Lower Lakes and their listing under the Ramsar Convention. Under that convention it is a condition of listing that the area has to be maintained as it was at listing in 1974. The Coorong was hyper-saline at that time, due to the diversion of south-eastern SA’s drainage to the sea, away from the Coorong that historically received it. A project that had spanned decades. On year 2000 figures, that amounted to some 450,000 megalitres, almost half the evaporation amount of the Lower Lakes, and a diversion from the Murray Darling Basin outflows. This is another issue for South Australians to consider. To send extra fresh water down the Murray to dilute the salinity in the Lower Lakes could contravene the Ramsar Convention.
Marcus restates in his final paragraph the old green catchcry that the basin has been over-exploited. That is a long way from the truth, the hard facts are that after ten years of below average rainfall, and what some describe as the worst ever drought, river managers were able to maintain a flow rate over Lock 1 at Blanchetown of 1000 megalitres per day. That is a third of the requirement to combat the evaporation from the Lower Lakes, but coupled with the drainage diversion from the south-east, it was within SA’s ability to maintain the lakes as they would have liked. Time for SA to look within its own jurisdiction for solutions, and stop finger pointing.
Murray Shaw
Chairman, Murrumbidgee Private Irrigators Inc.
Darlington Point, NSW
