I have a growing feeling that discussion of the Murray Darling as a basin is totally wrong. The 2 only get together just before the South Oz boarder, & apart from that bit to their swampy decline, have little in common. They most definitely don't share a common basin.

The Murry is fed by a massive dam system, in the southern alps, which gets its rainfall water from the southern circulation system. This is a reasonably reliable source of rainfall, with the dams giving a mostly reliable supply of river flow. It has little, if anything to do with the rainfall feeding the Darling

The Darling, on the other hand gets its water from Queensland, where the rainfall can be tropical storms, or can be frontal storms. Both these sources are much less reliable than the Murray, & are not supported by a major dam system.

Much of the Darling irrigation supply is taken from overland flood flows, which actually aid in flood control for down stream towns, & districts. This has always been a bit feast or famine in its nature, & nothing like its southern counterpart.

These differences in the water supply should, to my mind, be managed in an entirely different way. The idea of lumping them together, & trying to apply the same basic management technique to both systems is something that could really only be suggested by someone with little, or no understanding of these facts.

That we have such a plan developed by a commission, staffed to a very large extent by moonlighting academics, is no surprise to any practical person, who has seriously looked at the plan.

That the whole thing, of them being treated as a single system, started with John Howard, a city lawyer makes sense, but I'm sure he would not have allowed this foolishness to get so far.

Hasbeen, I agree that the Murray and Darling are very different geomorphological and climatological realms.

But what is it in the plan the irks you about them being treated together and in the same or a similar manner?

Can you tell us in what ways you think they should be managed differently?

Thanks

The riverena was a starting point. The murray river is partly fed by victoria which has an election in a few weeks. [ dartmouth dam ]

Sorry Ludwig, been busy..

OK, to start with, to make sure that more than half the hype has not been just a South Australian grab for Eastern, & Northern Oz water, we must ensure the pain is fairly distributed.

We must make make it very well known & must make it that the greatest cuts will be in South Australia, with those at the bottom of the river, the greatest of all. We can not continue to have this healthy river thing mean that Murray irrigators in the central areas of Vic, & NSW get no water at all, for up to 2 years, while our most vocal southern folk, are complaining at being restricted to 80, & 60% of their full allocation.

Secondly the difference between controlled, [dammed] & uncontrolled [natural flow], must be recognised. It is not reasonable to expect Queensland irrigators to watch thousands of mega liters go rolling by in a flood, before they can harvest any of it. They do not have a Snowy scheme to supply them, once the flood has gone. Once gone, there may be no more for quite some time. The Rainfall is much less regular in the tributaries of the Darling, so water must be taken when possible.

These Queensland's are entitled to that water every bit as much as some vineyard somewhere near Adelaide, & it will be used much more efficiently before most of it has been lost in evaporation. Further downstream much is done with weirs, locks etc, to enable more controlled usage.

Thirdly we must make sure that the people on the commission are adequately skilled for the job. From what we see of their efforts so far, that appears to be very unlikely, & this will cause even more problems than required.

Continued.

Possibly the worst thing happening in Oz at the moment are the proliferation of environmental Science courses in our universities. Our water resources department, & our local councils have dozens of graduates of these things, much to our detriment.

The people doing these courses, by & large are either environmentalists, or dummies who could never get into any other B Sc degree. An OP of 15 will get you in, & in the second year, one course was still doing year 10 high school maths. B Sc indeed. Many of these people are much more interested in the invertebrates in the bed sand of our rivers than in the people who paid most of the cost of their education, & try to earn an honest living, being productive.

Nothing these people have studied qualifies them to judge the natural requirements of a river system, or the effect their recommendations are likely to have on the river system or its people.

The fact that the people in the commission can suggest that a reduction of 35% on even part of the irrigation supply, could lead to the loss of as few at 800 jobs shows us that those who have been given the job are completely out of their depth. Anything they have suggested should be discarded, & a new studdy, with people with some business acumen be established. All this lot are doing is Labor dirty work, to try to satisfy their new green partners.

Of course any one with any grey matter should have noticed by now, that satisfying a green is a complete impossibility

I am in the riverina catchment area, and currently cleaning up after the storm, that sent 10cm of water through our house on Friday night 10 days ago. The reasons for our inundation are many and varied, but include the fact that the height of the railway line and road to the west of us, the natural drainage direction, have been raised since the last inundation in 1995. This meant that the level of trapped water was higher by a very few inches, but enough to give us wet feet. Many more residents of my village had feet of water through their homes, but this event has been classified as a flood event. Consequently many residents will not receive insurance, as they are covered for storm, but not flood.
I am rejoicing at the bountiful rain that is filling up our catchment area, but I wish that people on higher ground had been allowed to build more dams, to mitigate the effect of the railways and RTA in making our property more flood prone! Of course the council has not recovered from the flood in March, and they are very unlikely to be able to respond to the needs of the people in my small community - 60 homes inundated - perhaps 25% of the village.
But why couldn't my eastern neighbours harvest the water that flooded us this year - because there is a ban on building any more dams. I have spent the last few months rejoicing that the dams are finally getting full. But now I have a wry grin on my face - full dams and my home is flooded. Water management is very complex. Buying water allocations is an odd option - especially when you aren't actually buying ANYTHING. I welcome the MD investigation, but please focus on HUMANS and food production. This last week has shown me that the rivers can cope and regenerate with very infrequent 'rain events'