Quite simple in practise, but just about totally impossible for Governments. Step one:- Construct Lock Zero. Step two:- Automate the Barrage gates. Step Three:- At very low flows and drought conditions open the Barrage Gates,allow sea water in ( USING THE ACTUAL YEAR OF 1915 AS A MODEL )which killed the Weeping Willows ( page 49 A Fresh History of the Lakes ) and turn Mannum's fresh river into a salt river and no mention of collapsing the river banks. The Murray Darling Basin rivers flow again as is happening now by using the automated gates and gradually flushing out the system below Lock Zero. Try to correct Lake Albert (The Pirie Street Idea) at Narung and if that fails have a look at Dr. Geddes has suggested by building a canal with a automated gate between the lake and the Coorong. Remember over 90% of the River flows out through the Mouth, very little actually reaches the Coorong.

Spud, has Dr Geddes written up his proposal? If so, do you have a link? I have little confidence in any action that maintains Lake Albert as a closed end system because "sloshing" of fresh water from outside has never worked anywhere unless it is associated with a much greater tidal range than the two foot tides (and less) down that way.

Lake Albert is roughly 20% of the surface area above the barrages so it needs a significant through flow to prevent evaporation derived salinity increases. It wouldn't need to be as high as 20% of total river flows, just enough to completely exchange the entire volume about every 3 years. I don't know what the average depth of Lake Albert is but if it is the same 3m as Alexandrina then the volume is 18,000ha x 30ML = 540,000ML.

A third of this volume (180GL or 493ML/day), discharged much further down the Coorong's North Lagoon, would completely flush the 86,000ML lagoon twice a year and maintain it at similar salinity levels to the lakes (600 to 900EC) which would probably be too fresh for the local species mix. Sea water injected into the South lagoon via a pipe under the dunes could correct this imbalance as it flowed north.

We need to manage the Murray from the mountains down to the sea. There are old irrigation channels that seep and evaporate three times as much water as the remaining irrigators use. In places the system needs to be deepened; to reduce quite massive evaporation, which takes as much as 50% of current water flows.
Many irrigators would sooner have recycled water and its nutrient load; given, it would be vastly more reliable than any river system. We need to build many more small dams in upland areas to force vast quantities of water into the landscape, from where it doesn't evaporate and weeps back into the system during the dry times; thereby vastly extending vital environmental flows!
Particularly, given a climate changed future, where the feast or famine nature of our river system flows, will likely be even more accentuated and exacerbated than now.
We need to shift much of our current food production to Tassie and a seemingly vast untapped wealth of water and suitable land currently just grazed. We need other production strategies for those currently dependant on the Murray, like Algae based bio fuel production, which only borrows water and then returns most of it to the system cleaned up and divested of often problematic nutrient loads.
This would allow many farms and farmers to prosper as never before; and all those towns and villages who depend on them; and, for just a tiny fraction of the water current irrigation demands!
Rhrosty.

Lance there isn't a link it's notes from a meeting nine months after
a colleague and I in August,2009 had presented to the DEH in S.A.. The plan which involved changing Lake Albert from a blind end lake to a transit lake for water being discharged into the North Coorong. The water will be fresh during wetter times,estuarine during dry times. Some of this will flow into the Southern Coorong with "The Narrows" reversing the hyper saline conditions that are affecting the RAMSAR site. As usual we heard no more from DEH as it was a sea water/fresh water proposal for the drought period, Government policy was fresh water only.
He showed Lake Albert on a map "Increase Connestivity" with a channel and regulator and on a second map "Channel Lake Albert to Coorong to allow "FLUSHING".

Peter is more interested in protecting a political position, than recognising that a sensible solution must be found.
In fact he is so vindictively pleased that Lance does not agree with Jennifer that he has completely missed the vital point of the Ian Mott reference.
That is: we need to find a better solution.
This area of SA is affected by its coastal proximity. How much or how little it is affected is not really the issue.
SA is claiming they’re 'victims' of upstream.
They are claiming they should be allowed to be the same as the rest of the MDB when the rest of the MDB is clearly not affected by a coastal proximity.
With good planning and some foresight, SA’s position could be a huge advantage for SA as spud 24, Lance, Jennifer and the AEF are all trying to explain.
The current system with its barrages or dykes (or whatever), has proven to be unsustainable. They need to be either radically upgraded or their use needs to be sensibly rationalised.
It is time to move on and work for a good solution Peter.
We don't actually need more studies; we all already know that it has not been an environmental or human success story.
It’s time to recognise there have been some mistakes made and then we can perhaps work on fixing them.

Spud42,
You need to look at the geography again you need to re look at the desired possition of Lock Zero, near Wellington as it is the River Murray up stream of Wellington that must be protected from sea water invasion.
All major pumping stations that remove water for most of SA are up stream of Wellinton to Mannum.