Jennifer Marohasy

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Murray-Gate: Some Questions for Media Watch

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ABC News Watch is unsure of the motivation behind Media Watch’s inquiries regarding my research on the Murray River. Based on their understanding, none of the 11 members of the Media Watch team have the scientific qualifications, or necessary scientific experience, to comment or judge the science behind the policy debate about the Murray River.

ABC News Watch today put 15 questions to Media Watch about what it is calling Murray-Gate.

Questions are here: http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com.au/

They are good questions. But what’s the deadline? When will the questions be answered? I was expected to give immediate answers to Media Watch. I think Media Watch should have until 5pm tomorrow, Friday.

Read more here: http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com.au/

Salt Water, Crocodiles and the Lower Lakes: In Perspective

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JO NOVA has posted on the Murray and Media Watch with comment:

“She [Jennifer Marohasy] wants to restore the estuary to its estuarine (salty) form. The end of Australia’s biggest river (the Murray) has barrages across it, to stop the salt water entering. The farmers near the end now depend on the freshwater, just as the farmers in the middle of the long river depend on the highly variable water there too. This is a big policy dog-fight I’m not in on. But I suspect if someone were suggesting putting barrages across the Yarra, the Swan or the Brisbane, the Greens and the ABC would not be attacking people who opposed the barrages. There is no higher principle or policy sense at work here.”

Read more here:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/jennifer-marohasy-and-abcs-mediawatch-tribal-warfare/

Charles Bourbaki made comment in the thread:

“Australia is one of those rare countries where the twice daily tidal influx has no influence on our estuarine rivers. Saltwater crocodiles are never seen in them and people are safe swimming many miles inland. The scientists at Media Watch know this and are quite rightly asking questions.”

I’m so used to having to defend my position and explain that there would be tidal inflows without the barrages that I didn’t get the sarcasm and left comment suggesting I have absolutely no sense of humour.

Thanks Jo and Charles for helping to get some much-needed perspective back into this issue – at least for me.

And the following letter sent into the Victor Harbour Times (a newspaper read by Lake Alexandrina residents) last autumn provides a very local perspective:

Sky High Salinity & SA Water
Tuesday, 31 May 2011

Re the statements by SA [South Australia] Water spokesperson published last week in the Times.

He started absolutely spot on with “The barrages are designed to protect water quality in the River Murray & Lower Lakes by providing a physical barrier between the fresh water in the Lower lakes & the saline water in the Coorong.”

This is exactly what SA Water is failing to do. They are maintaining too low a level upstream of the barrages. Currently levels US Goolwa barrage are fluctuating on the tide (Tuesday 31st between .28 metre & .54m). When a high tide and southerly wind arrive, like the .77m of the 24th May we have massive entry of saltwater. This is not a minor “some salt water entry”. Neat salt water reached as far as midway between Point McLeay and Point Sturt. There is large loss of freshwater dependent aquatic life along with loss of water by irrigators who receive no warning. Hope everyones auto watering systems for stock & irrigation were off.

It is not all flushed out in the following days. A week later we have salinity from 2,8000 at Clayton to 2,000 at Goolwa. Currency Creek went to almost 10,000 at the peak and will probably take months to come back down with the regulator limiting the flow.

There should no longer be a large number of gates open, flows are now down to 24,00Ml/day from some 80.000 at the end of February this year.

Two thirds of the gates should be closed with a level maintained around .5 – .6m.

Lets hope when they do eventually close the gates they have fixed the barrages, to prevent the saltwater leakage experienced last year. Have any capital works been done? Perhaps it’s not too late for maybe rubber strips between the joints in the logs.

The barrages needs to be managed to do what they were built for so as to benefit the Lakes community rather minimise SA Water’s costs & manpower requirement.

Ideally the level should be raised as much as possible to maxmise the flow into Lake Albert, Currency Creek and other salty wetlands. When all full level should be lowered to a safe level depending on sea tides and wind forecast. This cycle is then repeated in order to get maximum freshwater exchange into these areas.

Thanks
George Bennett

PS Sunday evening looks a fair chance for another good dose of saltwater.

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Thanks to CJ for finding the newspaper clipping for me… again.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Two Questions for Your Federal Parliamentarian

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WE all know that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the main source of news and information for many Australians. The ABC is funded and owned by the government, but the ABC is apparently editorially independent as a consequence of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983.

So, who is the ABC accountable to? Certainly not to you or me.

The ABC, for all practical purposes, is exempt from the normal scrutiny that can be applied to government-funded institutions and departments. In particular the ABC’s programming material is exempt from Freedom of Information Requests [1].

So, the ABC can deploy its staff to spend hours and hours phoning people about me, asking the most intimate and bizarre questions and volunteering information to the same people that has no basis in fact. What can I do about it? Absolutely nothing.

Last week the ABC phoned around to get snips of fact about me that it could intertwine with lies with a plan for a national broadcast Monday night on its Media Watch program. I tried to head-that-off with full and frank answers to the many questions they asked me [2]. Indeed I provided them with a lot of information that was none of their business.

But not content with all of that, this week ABC journalists and researchers continue with the same activity; they continue to phone about. And from the feedback I have received from those the ABC has phoned: they continue to peddle misinformation about me, and misinformation about the natural history of the Murray River.

These activities are undertaken at tax payer expense, but there is no way I can find out who specifically they are phoning, or what specifically they are telling people. [3]

Questions need to be asked in the Australian Parliament about this exemption and about the ABCs continual harassment of me for daring to suggest that it is in the national interest for the Murray River’s estuary to be restored – for the 7.6 kilometres of concrete sea dyke to be removed from the bottom of the Murray Darling basin. [4]

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[1] ABC FOI – You can’t open the chamber of secrets
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com.au/2010/02/abc-foi-you-cant-open-chamber-of.html

“For those considering an FOI request to the ABC for program related material, such as internal correspondence that might provide an insight into the way errors get into the ABC’s editorial process, beware of a clause in the FOI act that lists the ABC as an exempt agency with respect to documents “in relation to its program material and datacasting content” (Part II of schedule 2)…

“ABC cite ABC v University of Technology Sydney in relationship to this and from the ruling it seems the only way to open the vault is for the FOI ACT to be amended to allow access to ABC documents.”

[2] Media Watch Under Scrutiny
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2012/03/media-watch-under-scrutiny-2/

[3] Most government organisations are covered by a set of generally applicable exemptions many of which require a balancing of public interest. The ABC, however, could assign 10 people to research me and my activities and there would be nothing I could do about it or find out about it.

[4] Podcast available at the Sydney Institute http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/speaker/jennifer-marohasy/

Watching Her Watching Them: Graham Young

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Jennifer Marohasy has been campaigning to have the barrages – a form of dam – removed from what most of us would think of as the mouth of the River Murray. While much has been made of the fact that the Murray often doesn’t run into the sea, hardly anyone is aware that it is stopped from doing that by a series of dams.

During the Federation plus 100 drought that we have just experienced, water was being siphoned off from higher up the Murray and Darling to keep the lakes at the mouth of the Murray full. If they had been in their natural state the tide would have done that for free, and saved a considerable amount of water for upstream communities.

On Line Opinion first published Jennifer’s controversial views on the lower lakes in August 2008.[1] We did that because they made sense. The current arrangements with the lakes are obviously artificial, and their listing as a RAMSAR wetland is just as obviously mistaken.

Media Watch contacted Marohasy on Friday seeking answers to a list of questions with the intention of going to air tonight. If another program behaved like this they would run the risk of making a star appearance on Media Watch. Marohasy formed the opinion that the story had already been written. That seems a reasonable point of view.

Certainly the questions that Media Watch put to Marohasy indicated that they either had done no independent research about the lakes, or were incapable of understanding simple physical concepts. The questions about her sources of income were bizarre and mostly irrelevant, but obviously intended to frame her as a stooge for some group or another…

Read more here: //www.ambitgambit.com/2012/03/12/media-watching-her-watching-them/

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Saving the Coorong by Restoring Its Native State Available Online here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7762

Media Watch Under Scrutiny

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MEDIA Watch contacted me on Friday with a barrage of questions concerning my work on the need to restore the Murray River’s estuary. Their line of questioning suggested that I was misleading the Australian public on the important issue of water reform in the Murray Darling. Indeed, the implication was that I am but a stooge for vested interests.

It appears Media Watch is contemplating asserting or implying that my professional judgement and integrity as a scientist has been influenced or corrupted by personal financial gain. Accordingly, I have sought legal advice on the matter, and include this in my full response that can be downloaded here:

https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JenniferMarohasy_ReplytoMediaWatch_Amended12March.pdf

My responses to their specific questions also follows:

Media Watch: Do you accept that the vast majority of recognised experts on the natural history and hydrology of the Lower Lakes disagree with your conclusion that they were estuarine immediately prior to the erection of the cialis Murray Mouth barrages, or at any time in the past 2000 years?

Jennifer Marohasy: No. The relevant scientific literature, as published in peer-reviewed journals by recognised experts, indicates that the Lower Lakes were estuarine prior to the erection of the Murray Mouth barrages.

The following quote from a scientific paper published in the journal Marine Geology by Professors R.P. Bourman, A.P. Belperio, C.V. Murray-Wallace and N. Harvey, citing E. Barnett, seems to sum up the conclusion of these recognised experts:

“Originally a vibrant, highly productive estuarine ecosystem of 75,000 ha, characterised by mixing of brackish and fresh water with highly variable flows, barrage construction has transformed the lakes into freshwater bodies with permanently raised water levels; freshwater discharge has been reduced by 75% and the tidal prism by 90% (Bourman and Barnett, 1995; Harvey, 1996).”

Professor John Cann and co-workers have studied fossil foraminifera – tiny protozoa with shells of calcium carbonate preserved in the sediments of the Lower Lakes – concluding that the changes in the foraminiferal assemblages over the most recent 2,000 years indicate a general trend of increasing marine influence, up until the construction of the barrages that now block the natural ebb and flow between the Lower Lakes and Southern Ocean.

Professor Peter Gell writing in the recently published The Sage Handbook of Environmental Change has commented that the natural state of the Lower Lakes was tidal, that the lakes have been incorrectly listed as freshwater in the International Ramsar Convention, and that until their natural estuarine character is recognised it will be difficult to reverse the long-term decline in their ecological health.

Geoscience Australia classifies the Lower Lakes as part of a wave dominated barrier estuary with positive annual hydrodynamics.

UPDATE: I have been informed by Media Watch that they will NOT be running their intended program tonight (“This item will not be on this week’s show”). It would appear that the possibility of a defamation action coupled with a solid explanation of the science and history of the Lower Lakes has caused Media Watch to change their program. I would like to particularly thank those people who sent emails to Media Watch this morning.

[Read more…] about Media Watch Under Scrutiny

Minister Caica Ignorant of History of Lake Alexandrina

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Following the release of my recent technical report, Plugging the Murray’s Mouth: The Interrupted Evolution of a Barrier Estuary [1], the South Australian water minister, Paul Caica, made public comment that Lake Alexandrina has been a “predominately freshwater environment for the last 7,000 years”. The Minister also indicated that my claim that Lake Alexandrina was once part of an estuary is “myth and not supported by science.”[2]

In fact the relevant scientific literature, as published in peer-reviewed journals, indicates that the Lower Lakes were estuarine prior to the erection of the viagra sea dykes, known locally as barrages. But it is also revealing to simply consider the history of the region. The first map of Lake Alexandrina, drawn by John Arrowsmith in 1838 based on reports of water quality from the famous British explorer Charles Sturt, shows the waters of Lake Alexandrina to transition from salt to brackish to fresh.


[This map has been copied from a zoom here http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm2633]

It appears that the South Australian government is also ignorant of the history of the lake with comment in important planning documents that: “The Lower Lakes have been predominantly freshwater for the last 7,000 years and that seawater ingressions, when they did occur, did not extend north of Point Sturt.”[3]

Point Sturt is clearly marked on the 1838 map. The map clearly shows that seawater ingressions extended into the main body of the lake turning the water brackish.

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[1] The report can be downloaded here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/publications/

[2] Water must mix in the Lower Lakes, says new Murray-Darling report. Adelaide Advertiser, February 24, 2012. Available online at http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/water-must-mix-in-the-lower-lakes-says-new-murray-darling-report/story-e6frea83-1226281052851

[3] Securing the Future: A Long-term plan for the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth, June 2010, Government of South Australia. Available online as a 13mb pdf.