It beggars belief that SA will burn 45% gas fired electricity to supposedly grow hay with 100 GL of desal while the lower lakes evaporate 800 GL. There is now a proposal to pipe water from Meningie on Lake Albert to the Coorong. Too salty for pelicans or something. They are playing at ornamental ponds while upstream water users have to leave the land.

The barrages are apparently about 75 cm higher than the 1930 water level. Type Tawitchery Island in the Google Earth search box to see the layout. That 75 cm will be overwhelmed later this century if sea level rise predictions are correct. The whole area will be as salty as the sea so might as well open the barrages now.

The worth of dams is evident from the fact Broken Hill got its water from the Darling and will henceforth use the Murray. That river is boosted by 2,100 GL from the Snowy scheme.

Lovely summary of the insanity of the MDB and its mismanagement, but then we have done no better over the last two centuries of urban water management... so nothing new there!. I hope readers take time to unpack the wealth on information you have packed into this article. The stupidly of the barriers at the mouth, the unrealistic expectations of an always flowing river system and the $100million gift given to SA (its basically indirect use of expensive desalination to supply crops). There is no easy answer to the MDB, but that is no excuse for carrying on with those measures that have failed, made things worse or are just plain stupid. The big issue is how to disarm all the vested and political interests that invest the MDB's management. This is an important global food basin, we owe ourselves (and the world) much more than we are currently delivering through this historically bound mismanagement.

Agreed! The whole thing is a huge dog's breakfast that needs to be completely redone, by the Fed using external powers to fix the whole thing! We can water twice as much irrigation with half current water entitlements which must remain with the land they've been allocated to not bought and sold/relocated etc!

And starts with retrospectively reversing any and all privatisation of our water! Need to be managed by a single FEDERAL Authority to stop over-allocation and watering the ocean etc!

Must be managed from the mountains down to the sea with many more allowed small dams that force water into the landscape and extend water flows by up to 3 years!

And allow the increased revegetation from this activity, to effectively recharge the atmosphere with additional water, ensure our rain forests swaps, remain natural fire breaks!

All open channels must be closed and their flow continued only through metered pipelines. All extraction needs to be metered and limited

All allowed irrigation needs to be applied only via underground applications, and give this is done? Allow twice the country to be irrigated with half former water allocations

All saltwater springs that have been excluded and their flow diverted to the ocean via pipelines, must first go through deionisation dialysis desalination to recover as much as 95% as (waste not want not) potable water! And the remaining 5% allowed to continue to discharge to the ocean via existing infrastructure!
Alan B.

I know, all that I've outlined could be done along with the engineered deepening of lakes to both narrow them and allow them to retain more water. And given they are narrowed and contained inside levy banks? Able to be covered to reduce eliminate current 50% annual evaporation losses.

Now this will cost more than the sales of the water could ever pay for and we need another source of ongoing annual income in billions to pay for all the re-engineering that now needs to be done to fix the most engineered water system in the southern hemisphere?

And the funds required are available now, today! If we can allow sanity to replace bogus facts, fear-mongering, mountainous misinformation to stop preventing it flowing to us! TBC.
Alan B.

Cont. The funds, billions required for the proposed massive re-engineering proposed would flow as annual billions if we just enable our decision-makers to make a decision that then allows us to become the world's safest repository for the world's mountainous nuclear waste. No question! And given e just stop listening to the mischievious vexatious bogus BS, put out there for the extremely ill-informed to then have them looking like rabbits in the headlights, not able to move, frozen with unfounded fear!

And by something we could use to provide this nation, in perfect, walk away safety, with virtually free energy for thousands of years!

Energy to first desalinate a Sydney harbour's worth of new water daily and pump it from the west over land barely above sea level to land up to 15 metres below sea level. And given this proceeds without pause for a decade or two, allow the lakes to first fill/add their natural evaporation to the clouds recharging them and their rainfall capabilities, as well as, progressively desalinating these systems that then go on to flow all the way to the sea via their old natural channels.

And as they do, provide new desal ops for new applications alongside!

Yes I know it's big! So also is the plan and the potential free money tha would allow us, this generation to create and complete a plan even more visionary than Snowy mark one!

And re-afforest this nation from coast to coast in endless orchards and fine furniture timber plantations and their associated
understory/ground cover, fibre, food and beverage crops as we do so.
Alan B.

A common technique in classes explaining electrical theory is to use
water as a simile for electricity.
We can do the reverse for water.
Imagine dams as capacitors and the river as resistors.
Knowing how much electricity (water) is upstream as snow or headwater
dam quantity the dams (capacitors) can adjust the flow so that the
river never stops flowing and allows for the irrigators to take their
needs. Such chain of dams can adjust the release independently to
control the flow in all parts.
After some experience doing this manually a program could be written
to do it automatically, with each irrigator putting in his request
and the controller informing each farmer just how much water he could have.
After a few years of operation the whole system could be self learning
and be automatic.
In such a complex system that has to take account of rainfall in
different parts of Australia it becomes an impossible task for one
person or even a group of people to get it right. That is a self evident truth.
It is hard enough for the weather bureau to get the wx right let alone
all the complications of a river system as well as weather variations.
It would need the construction of a number of dams or large weirs.