Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Water

Wettest September on Record in Murray Darling

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FOR over a decade the Bureau of Meteorology, and CSIRO have been predicting on-going drought in the Murray Darling Basin. Hundreds of scientists have been employed –at the expense of tax payers – to run General Simulation Models all predicting the same outcome.  This forecast decline has been blamed on global-warming and has resulted in far-reaching legislative changes, which by reducing the amount of water that can be allocated to grow crops, has affected employment in regional centers.

Yet when we look at the hard data, there has been no overall decline in rainfall. The wettest year in the Murray Darling Basin was 2010 – that is the wettest year since 1900 according to the official Bureau of Meteorology statistics.

Annual average rainfall in the Murray Darling Basin, 1900 to 2015.
Annual average rainfall in the Murray Darling Basin, 1900 to 2015.

It has also been repeatedly stated that the drought conditions are going to be most pronounced over the cooler months, specifically from April through to October.

Yet the Basin has just experienced its wettest September on record – that is the wettest September since 1900 according to the official Bureau of Meteorology statistics.

September rainfall in Murray Darling Basin, 1900 to 2016
September rainfall in Murray Darling Basin, 1900 to 2016

Some argue that the hoarding of water in the dams based on wrong forecasts by the Bureau of Meteorology has exacerbated current flooding particularly along the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers – perhaps also in the Lachlan River that runs through Forbes.

The problem is that the Bureau, working with the CSIRO, have become wedded to General Circulation Models, and the failed theory of anthropogenic global warming. Over the last year we have irrigators in the Murray Darling with very limited water allocations, paying ridiculously high prices for temporary water, during a season when even the Bureau was forecating above median rainfall: remember in May while Agricultural Minister Barnaby Joyce was announcing concessional loans, the price of ‘temporary water’, on the market – increasingly controlled by governments – had increased from $30 per megalitres to almost $300 per megalitres as a direct result of the water buybacks – and limited water allocations for ‘general security’ water licence holders.  This is no way to run a productive agricultural sector.

 

When Revegetation is Not Revegetation

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During the recent drought, when the waters of Lake Alexandrina receded, rye grass was sown on the dry lake bed in front of Trevor Harden’s home to stop the soil blowing away. Mr Harden would have preferred the barrages to have been opened, and the lake allowed to reconnect with the sea.

When I first visited Lake Alexandrina, at the bottom of the Murray River, it was during the drought and the so-called Murray mouth had to be kept open by a sand dredge. During my recent visit the lake was full of water, and still more water flowed in at Wellington, and out at Goolwa, out to the Southern Ocean.

According to lake-front resident, Trevor Harden, more than 50,000 megalitres per day has been flowing past his home and down the Goolwa channel to the Southern Ocean since November 2010 – more than 70,000 was flowing past on the day I visited, on March 14, 2011.

The view from Mr Harden’s veranda on that day was of black swans and pelicans sailing past on a broad expanse of brown water. But the screen saver on his computer showed wheel tracks from a quad bike across the dry lake bed. The photograph had been taken at the height of the drought in April 2009.

[Read more…] about When Revegetation is Not Revegetation

Parliament to Finally Admit Water Act Unbalanced?

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On the pages of The Australian Financial Review on November 16, 2010, Sydney barrister Jospehine Kelly wrote that:

“No one in federal Parliament is being honest with the people of the Murray-Darling basin and the Australian pubilc.  The Water Act puts the environment first when allocating water to the basin. 

“Social and economic considerations are not relevant to deciding how much water the environment needs.  Water available for human use is what is left…”

Today Senator Barnaby Joyce forced a Senate inquiry into the Water Act with the support of independents Senator Fielding and Senator Xenophon.  The inquiry is to determine whether in fact the Act does provide an equal balance between economic, social and environmental factors – or not.

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The Value of Water to the Queensland Government: A Note from Tony

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IN all the controversy over management of dams in South East Queensland, it is worth considering the value of the resource to the nominal owners, the Queensland Government, who sell that water to consumers.

With the aid of the Wivenhoe dam capacity diagrams, it is possible to determine that during the recent major drought, Wivenhoe went from 100 percent down to its low point of 15 percent.  That took eight and a half years, and there were no restrictions, and water was always plentiful for every use, be that residential, commercial or industrial use.

The cost of that water at the time was also cheap, in fact, the cost was almost negligible. However, as that low point of 15 percent approached, firstly the Beattie Government, and then the following Bligh Government, started to ramp up the prices and impose progressively more draconian restrictions upon the consumption of that water.

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Snowy Hydro tops up floods with environmental flow

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WHILE residents of Wagga Wagga scrambled to save their belongings from rising flood waters there was a rumour circulating that the crisis was exacerbated by bureaucratic incompetence, in particular that Snowy Hydro was releasing environmental flow water into the already flooded Murrumbidgee River. 

I was angry at even the concept. It was inconceivable. I phoned Snowy Hydro early on December 10 to set the record straight.

I was put through to their media spokesperson, Paul Johnson, who assured me that Snowy Hydro would do nothing to exacerbate the flood crisis and in particular that no water was being released from Lake Eucumbene. The lake has a capacity nine times Sydney harbour, he said. It was only about 25 percent full because most of the rain had been falling below the Lake.

When I fed that reply back into the email stream from which the rumour originated, Ron Pike, a retired rice farmer and tireless advocate for agriculture, asked, “Why then have water levels in Lake Eucumbene been falling despite significant inflows?”

Perhaps water was being sent to the Snowy River, I thought, but surely not to the Murrumbidgee?

I phoned Mr Johnson back, to put that question to him, but he won’t speak to me anymore.  I phoned him back several times during the remainder of last Friday. His assistants initially assured me that he would return my call, but by 4pm, could only confirm that he was in his office and had received my many phone messages.

Earlier in the day I had asked to speak with Mr Johnson’s boss, David Harris, but was told he was unavailable. It was at about 1pm that I phoned around all the Snowy Hydro offices asking the same questions and leaving the same questions with the pleasant women who answer the phones. I hoped that someone knowledgeable would phone me back and explain why water levels were falling in Lake Eucumbene if no water was being released.

Eventually someone did ring me back, a Mr James Muddle from NSW Office of Water.  I said it was very kind of him to phone me, but that I really wanted to speak with someone from Snowy Hydro. He insisted that perhaps he could help. So I asked him, “Is Snowy Hydro releasing water from Lake Eucumbene?” He replied he couldn’t answer that question, that it would be an operational issue for Snowy Hydro whether any water was being released or not.  So I asked Mr Muddle what he did – wondering if I could ask him a question that he might be able to answer.  Mr Muddle replied that the NSW Office of Water was concerned with water policy issues.

“Ahh,” I thought and asked, “Is Snowy Hydro releasing water from Lake Eucumbene because of commitments to the NSW Office of Water to return water as part of its environmental flow obligations?” 

Mr Muddle replied that we don’t normally talk about environment flows when there are floods. So I asked, “No environmental flow releases are being made, that might be topping up the current deluge?”

“You are putting words in my mouth,” he replied.

After more questions from me, all of which Mr Muddle was unable to provide straight answers to, he suggested I phone Tony Webber at the State Water Corporation. And I did. He was not in, but his assistant Jane Urquhart, said she might be able to help and so I repeated my questions.

But alas, Ms Urquhart was unable to answer my questions. She did, however, promise to try and find out and emailed me back with a message from her “water delivery manager” that the information I was after could be found in the operating licence between Snowy Hydro and the NSW Office of Water on the NSW Office of Water website.

Well I went there to have a look, but where to start? The licence has a package of agreements, licences and other regulations and the current licence as at May 1, 2010, is only 102 pages long.  I started to read, but it was not easy going and the more I read, the more I doubted that I would recognise the answer even if I stumbled across it, because the document makes so many references to part three of schedule three then part four of schedule four, and in case of shortfall, in case of excess, in case of base passing flow, in this water year versus next dependent on how much water might be in which of the sixteen major dams at any one time.

So I sent some more queries back into internet world and all was finally revealed. A most reliable source and someone who recently attended a meeting with David Harris, the boss of Snowy Hydro, explained that somewhere in the range of 4,000 to 5,000 megalitres of water per day will continue to flow from the Snowy Hydro System, regardless of downstream impacts, because of environmental flow obligations in the Snowy Hydro operating licence.

Yep! Blowering Dam may be out of control, the water belting out of Burrunjuck, the Central Murray likely to go under again as early as Wednesday, but because of a formal agreement between NSW Office of Water and Snowy Hydro, involving an obligation to South Australia, approximately 500,000 megalitres, equivalent to one Sydney Harbour of water, must be released as soon as possible as environmental flow.

In short, senior bureaucrats have signed off on an agreement, which they are now honouring, which requires environmental flow releases into the already swollen Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers. Of course these men in suits don’t live in the Murray Darling Basin and they will continue to receive a salary, paid into their Sydney bank accounts, regardless of how many extra wheat fields flood and extra homes are destroyed.

Inconceivable, but true.

Also published at Quadrant Online http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/12/bureaucratic-flood-damage

Can’t Do as Government Says: MDB Chief Quits

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“MURRAY Darling Basin Authority Chairman Mike Taylor has announced his sudden intention to step down from the chairman’s role at the end of January. 

“It is understood Mr Taylor had a difference of opinion with the Federal Government over interpretation of the Water Act and its ability to properly consider the social and economic impacts of proposed water cuts, in the Authority’s final plan.

“A statement issued by the MDBA today said Mr Taylor had written to Federal Water Minister Tony Burke regarding the Basin Plan and the chairman’s role.

“Mr Taylor said balancing the requirements of the Water Act 2007 against the potential social and economic impact on communities would be a “significant challenge”.

“The Guide was developed with full regard to the requirements of the Water Act, and in close consultation with the Australian Government Solicitor,” he said.

“However, the authority has sought, and obtained, further confirmation that it cannot compromise the minimum level of water required to restore the system’s environment on social or economic grounds.

“Under the Water Act the further steps the Authority is able to take over the next 12 months in developing the Proposed Basin Plan, and the Basin Plan itself, will necessarily mirror and refine what has been done by the Authority to date…

http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/political/mike-taylor-quits-mdba/2018418.aspx?storypage=0

from Mike Taylor quits MDBA, BY COLIN BETTLES
07 Dec, 2010 08:56 AM