Friday, March 29, 2024

River on the rise

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Murray River on the rise
Photo: Lloyd Polkinghorne

The mighty Murray is experiencing high flows from a rain event further up the catchment. On Wednesday, the river had 17,200 megalitres per day flowing past Koondrook Barham at a height of 4.748m. 

Alarmingly the riverbanks compromised under the last nine years of river regulation, Murray–Darling Basin Authority management, are falling away before our eyes. 

Huge chunks of bank, some up to 40 centimetres in depth are breaking away and collapsing into the water below. With a peak flow capacity at Koondrook Barham of around 30,000 megalitres a day, residents are concerned about what is to come. With the hard pack and organic matter now ruined along huge stretches of river, the flows eat into the sodic soils, that are now exposed, taking infrastructure, habitats and trees along the way.

Water turbidity has also significantly increased over the past four days. Ironically the MDBA recently announced a study into water quality with outbreaks of algae lower down the system. One wonders what effect the millions of cubic meters nutrient laden soil washed away does to algae growth?

Photo: Lloyd Polkinghorne

Food producers in the region are still going without decent water allocations, despite good inflows and a wet seasonal outlook. Our food producers now face a future of undermined allocations, that appear to have little correlation with seasonal variability. The last 15 years of water policy changes has increased the parcels of water held in the dam, products like carryover and a huge increase in the water to run the river system, all undermine the reliability of others who rely on the resource. 

Remember, the water that is currently flowing past isn’t ‘environmental’ water, much like the estimated 2,000,000 megalitres, up from 400,000–800,000 megalitres, now used in running the river system. This is despite the water having an environmental function in the river channel and adjoining land. General security licence holders essentially carry this cost, as water to run the river is set aside  before allocations, and are separate to ‘environmental’ water. 

‘Environmental’ water is just a term for irrigation licences held by Australia’s largest individual water holder, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. 

If our Federal Member for Farrer, Sussan Ley, Federal Environment Minister, can travel the world during a pandemic to advocate to save the Great Barrier Reef, one wonders what she could do, or has done about the destruction of the rivers and ecosystems with her own electorate. Will this be reflected at the next election?

The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper 5 August 2021

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 5 August 2021.

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