I would rather see a co operative of all irrigators, to elect their own board. No one knows the river like the irrigators.
There was something like 35 locks planned for the murray, but only about 12 were ever built.
Every lock is its own reservoir, backing up water for 50 or 60 kms or more.

Don't be so silly 56flood. The reserve bank is under bad management right now, & is doing almost as much harm to Oz, as is the government.
All to often those boards become the province of academics & or bureaucrats, who have less idea of what they are doing, than their office cleaner.

Haven't you noticed than when ever any of these government appointed bodies are required to do their job, particularly in an emergence, they invariably fail dramatically. Think bush fires & floods recently.

579 great to be able to agree with you on something.

I am secretary of an irrigation committee, although it is some years since I have pumped out of the river. We are the bottom of a system. In the same way as SA, our water comes from up stream. There are 4 other committees up stream of us, 2 on our river, & 2 on major tributary creeks.

As the last fresh water before the salt, we have as part of our charter a requirement to allow some fresh flow into the salt, when ever there is fresh water flow in the river. We set restrictions on extraction, [rubber stamped by water resources] on ourselves to achieve this.

After years of negations our system is that all above us comply with our restrictions. This does not apply when sudden storms may greatly augment supply in some headwaters for a couple of days, or when some headwaters may be dry. If the flow through our area increases, we increase extraction limits for all.

It took a while to get to this level of cooperation, but for years now it takes only 20 or so phone calls when necessary to arrange equity for all.

When are Australian going to stop blaming the cotton industry ie, Individual and 579, it certainly is not established, “Wasn't it established rather clearly that it is the cotton industry that was the cause of the state of the river? Stopping the cotton industry will solve nothing except un-employ thousands and cause hardship, Australia is in the top cotton exporting countries in the World. And Has been are the Reserve Band Board as bad as the MDBA it is about the terms of reference.

The logic of blaming cotton for the ills of the Murray escapes me. Irrigators who grow cotton presumably do so to get the best return they can for the water they use. If their allocation is say 500ML, and water is the key driver of their business, isn't it likely that any alternative crop will utilise that same 500ML simply by adjusting the area grown.

It would seem pointless to me to grow something of lesser return with that water. That would be a waste.

I'm a fan of Everald's especially his work on trying to kill age discrimination. But re the Murray, it's about to flood. We should be building dams. Good luck with that.