Kate Jennings got it so right with her advice, “Take out the barrages and create a functioning Murray River estuary with tidal flows that scour and revitalise” (‘Water Under the Bridge’, October).
During the recent drought the Murray River did not run dry. It has many times in the past, but it did not this drought because water held in upstream storages was continually released, including for environmental waterings into the Barmah River Red Gum Forest.
Indeed, while there was no water during the recent drought to grow rice or cotton, and some upstream anabranches of the Murray dried up with Murray cod burrowing into billabongs, there was a continual flow of water to South Australia. But in my opinion treating the Murray in this way, essentially as an irrigation ditch for SA, was a mistake and it didn’t help the environment of the Lower Lakes either. There was a local solution to the problems of the Lower Lakes and that was opening the barrages – the 7.6 kilometres of dyke built across the bottom of the lakes – and letting the Southern Ocean flood in as it once did naturally each autumn and for longer periods during drought.
If the barrage gates were permanently removed, and the Lower Lakes allowed to reconnect with the Southern Ocean, this would not only restore the Murray River’s estuary but also ensure more water for upstream environments come the next drought. At the moment, these environments are held at ransom to nonsense lobbying by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) that should have realised during the last drought that the upstream storages are just not large enough to supply the Lower Lakes during drought.
(I’m yet to hear the Melbourne-based ACF lobby to have Port Phillip Bay maintained as an artificial freshwater lake. Interestingly, it’s about the same size as the Lower Lakes, Coorong and Murray Mouth region. Furthermore, levels of extraction from the Murray River are comparable to levels of extraction from the Yarra River.)
Jennifer Marohasy
Rockhampton (on the Fitzroy River), QLD
