Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Water

South Australia’s Water Woes Include Much Politics

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I have it on good advice, from the cabbie who drove me to the airport in Canberra recently, that South Australian senator Nick Xenophon is the most powerful politician in Australia. 

Mr Xenophon is certainly demanding the attention of the most powerful politician officially, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, by insisting on more water for South Australia in return for the passage of the economic stimulus package.

Now he is backing a possible constitutional challenge by South Australia to remove barriers to water trade in Victoria. 

By backing this legal action, he will in effect be supporting the federal bureaucracy against the states – presumably only because he believes it is the federal government that will act in the interests of South Australia. 

Given its continual dominance of the national water agenda, it is probably a safe bet.  

[Read more…] about South Australia’s Water Woes Include Much Politics

Bunyips in Australian Rivers (Part 2)

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ACCORDING to Australian aboriginal mythology Bunyips are monsters that live in rivers.  According to Ron Pike, an Australian who has spent his life working with water from the Murrumbidgee River, much of what is being claimed about Australian rivers is as unreasonable as a belief in Bunyips: 

“The lack of flow volumes in the rivers of the Murray Darling Basin (MDBC) in recent years is not due to irrigation and over extraction.  The facts are that without the storages and the irrigation industries, conditions would have been considerably worse.   Throughout the MDB there is presently more wetland habitat than there would have been had there been no irrigation for the last several years.  It is also wrong to suggest that increasing stream flows by releasing extra water from storages, somehow benefits the environment.   It makes no appreciable difference to the  environment whether the Murrumbidgee at say Narrandera is running at 3,500 megalitres per day or 25,000 megalitres per day. The flows in both cases remain within the banks and do not, and cannot, water the floodplain or most wetlands.

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Australian Parliamentarian, and Sceptic, Banned Prevented from Tabling Climate Data

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DR Dennis Jensen BAppSc (RMIT), MSc (Melb), PhD (Monash) is the only member of the Australian Parliament with any training in science a PhD in a science discipline. 

[As correctly pointed out in the comments following this posting, my brother Jim Turnour, also a member of the Federal Parliament, has a Batchelor of Agricultural Science.  Other members with science and science-related degrees are listed in a comment in the following thread.]    

Yesterday Dr Jensen suggested in the Australian Parliament that many of the current problems facing the Murray Darling Basin are the result of low runoff as a consequence of changed land management practices (including more plantations in the top of catchments), catchment-wide drainage management plans (place in the 1980s and 1990s to lower water tables) and more efficient water use (resulting in less leakage). 

He explained that it was wrong to blame climate change for the low levels in the dams, because there had been no long term decline in rainfall in the Basin. 

Dr Jensen also explained that many of the climate models used to predict regional rainfall, including the CSIRO models (relied upon by Ross Garnaut in his report on climate change to the Australian government), are unreliable and unduly pessimistic.

When Dr Jensen asked to table supporting information in the Parliament by way of charts and tables, the request was denied. 

Much of the information that Dr Jensen was banned from tabling can be found in a recent publication from the IPA entitled ‘What’s Happening to the Murray River?’.

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The picture of Dr Jensen is from his parliamentary website.

Bunyips in Australian Rivers (Part 1)

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IN Aboriginal mythology the Bunyip was also known as Dongus, Kianpratty, Bunyup and Tumbata, depending on the tribal area. However regardless of name he was always evil and emerged from the water in search of prey as he sought to use his supernatural powers to punish evil doers.

While it is easy for modern man to pass this off as superstition, much of what is being claimed in relation to the rivers of the Murray Darling Basin is as unreasonable as a belief in Bunyips.

To begin to understand the ecology and the unique environment of the Murray Darling Basin, we need to revisit some of the observations made by the first explorers after the arrival of white man in Australia.

[Read more…] about Bunyips in Australian Rivers (Part 1)

Aussie Farmers: Not Beaten by Salt, But Drought and Government Policies

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REMEMBER the stories about how the Murray Darling Basin, the food bowl of Australia, was going to be lost to salt?  Headline after media headline told of imminent ruin from rising water tables bring salt.  

The Riverina, a once rich farming area in south western New South Wales, was considered most affected by this “scourge of salinity”, this “curse of salt”.  

In the next year it is likely that a lot of farmers in this area will walk, will leave the Riverina, but it won’t be because of salt.  Farmers in the Riverina worked with their local water corporation, Murray Irrigation Limited (MIL), and government engineers to solve the salt problem. 

While it was once feared over 300,000 hectares would be lost to salt, by March 2003 the area with shallow water tables had stabilized below 20,000 hectares and is now less than 4,000 hectares. 

Indeed farmers won’t be leaving because of salt.  They will be leaving because of prolonged drought, and government policy. 

[Read more…] about Aussie Farmers: Not Beaten by Salt, But Drought and Government Policies

No Shortage of Water in Australia

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ON a daily basis we hear the following two statements repeated in relation to water in Australia: 1. That Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth; and 2. That water is very scarce in Australia and we must take immediate action to conserve it. It is time we took a closer look at these assumed facts.  

If we convert the average annual rainfall into megalitres and do the same for the other continents, then yes, Australia does receive the least precipitation of all of the inhabited continents.  This is exemplified by comparing some average runoff data.  Of all of the rain that falls on Australia about 11% finds its way to the sea via our river system, which on average amounts to 290 million megalitres per year from mainland Australia. Another 50million megalitres runs to the sea from Tasmania.   By comparison the Mississippi river alone in USA averages a discharge of 560 million megalitres annually – almost double all of the rivers from mainland Australia. The Yangtze Kiang in China discharges 690 million megalitres annually and the Amazon in Brazil nearly ten times that amount.

So, yes, Australia does have meager water supplies compared to the other continents, but these figures lack relevance unless we consider two other vital factors. [Read more…] about No Shortage of Water in Australia