I agree that the lower lakes (Albert, Alexandrina) are doomed and no amount of utopian thinking by frequent flyer greenies will change that. I wonder however if instead of opening the barrages they could be left shut and the lakes blocked off to evaporate into shrinking ponds of sulphurous soup. Lake Albert could be barricaded at the channel near the Pt Malcolm freshwater lighthouse and dredging in Alexandrina could create a levee next to a navigation channel from Clayton down to Goolwa. Something like that might be inevitable with one metre sea level rise, assuming we haven't gone back to cave dwelling by then.

Dare I suggest that Goolwa residents are as much worried about house prices as the health of the river. It was only a few years ago that the Hindmarsh Island bridge gave rise to the 'secret womens business' debacle. It could work out cheaper just to pay everybody to move to the Gold Coast.

South Australians forget that if it wasnt for the upstream hydro scheme and the past needs of and money from upstream users (including irrigators), then the river would already be dry. SA businesses should be held in no higher priority than upstream users who have already gone years without full water allocations or even any allocations.

Environmental flows should be calculated to what the river would receive without human impediment in times of drought. Yes, there would be few humans taking water, but without the dams and storage systems we have built there wouldnt be any flows now anyway. This is why drought is a NATURAL disaster, not a man-made one.

Just thought I'd drop this in?

Futuristic Visions.

As Western man came to circumvent the earth?

First the spice economy, the tea and tobacco economy, then the oil economy

But since the real beginning of the industrial age, pushing the economy ever rapidly along has been the quarry economy, to which is tied pitstock politics forever growing but forever dying as vitally needed industrial resources run out.

Along with global warming, we might say that because the above is prohibited discussion virtually among the more successful industrialists, it is only the Avant-Guarde who dare to create a future picture of what might happen ---

Almost like an extended scene of fighter pilots celebrating during the Battle of Britain, a kind of Let us be Merry, for Tomorrow we may Die

Curious to see the IPA here but good too. What's unusual is that her article hasn't been inundated by the loony greens. It's prime slathering fodder for them. Just the mention of acid sulphate soils is usually enough to set them off.

I wish I could be more optimistic about the Murray River system as far as farming goes. I feel for the locals, especially those on or near the lakes.

My real fear is the political opportunism of the new Independent Senator for SA, Xenophon, who has modelled himself on Brian Harradine. He'll hold a gun to the Senate and Fielding will go along for the ride. SA politics reminds me of Queensland National Party stuff 40 years ago. Very parochial, wowserish and with a chip on its shoulder. Darned if I know why.

Unfortunately in the face of such a strong drought, very little can be done for the farmers and locals. The Government should certainly think about buying back the farms from those who want to get out. Don't let them (the farmers and properties) fall in to the hands of the banks.

Marohasy may actually be correct that removing the barrages is now the only realistic plan of action with respect to the Coorong, but she manages to avoid almost completely considering the cause of this environmental disaster - which is the gross overallocation of upstream water resources for many decades, in combination with the construction of literally thousands of dams, weirs, channels and other diversionary structures over the past century.

I live at one of the northeastern extremities of the Darling catchment, and people here still want to dam the rivers and streams in response to the extended drought - not for drinking water primarily, but for agriculture and horticulture. For example, the local council currently wants a new dam constructed on the Severn River, while yet another winery has applied to construct yet another weir on Accommodation Creek just downstream. While the Queensland government is now belatedly applying some restraint in approving such structures, it is clear that this parochial process extends downstream throughout the Basin, and has done for at least a century of neglect and mismanagement.

Clearly, there are issues concerning compensation for water allocations that need to be cancelled, but whatever we do is going to have to be expensive but necessary if Australia's most important river system is to be resuscitated.

As a postscript, it's interesting to note that Dr Marohasy is strangely silent in this article about her own claims from a couple of years ago that the Murray had been "saved". The fact that such drastic action is now probably necessary in the Coorong would seem to prove that triumphalist assertion was clearly wrong.

Saving the Coorong by restoring its native state, by Jennifer Marohasy, is an excellent and informative posting.

There is however another dimension to saving the Coorong and the Great Barrier Reef that politicians and governments are really obligated to consider as matter of utmost urgency.

The Rudd-Wong government's Caring for our Country information states 5,000 hectares of Adelaide coastal seagrass has already been lost. See: http://www.nrm.gov.au/funding/coastcare-hotspots-sa.html

A maths expert could help here because according to earlier Dept of Environment Seagrass Notes, studies in the Mediterranean indicate 400 square metres of seagrass can support 2,000 tonnes of fish per annum. So what should be the commercial and environment value of 5,000 hectares of Adelaide area alone, lost seagrass?

During the year 2000, 40 square kilometres of seagrass in Moreton Bay Queensland was devastated when smothered by toxic lyngbya algae proliferated by sewage and dredging nutrient pollution. Consequently when mutton birds arrived during migration they were unable to find adequate food, unprecedented (low population) mass starvation of mutton birds then occurring during October 2000, incredibly along coastline extending from Rockhampton Qld to South Australia and around Tasmania. Wildlife experts in 4 states were shocked by severity of the mortality.

It should already be well known that marine animals unable to feed in one are will impact on other areas and other marine life. Predators unable to feed on pilchards and anchovy from the native Coorong ecosystem will impact elsewhere or die. Mass starvation of Victoria's fairy penguins has been occurring. Ocean tuna stocks are not recovering as they should be. It is known animals require adequate food to breed. Mammals including cattle and humans are known to abandon their young due to food shortages. Unprecedented whale calf abandonment has been occurring on the Australian coast.

There must be no doubt Australian seagrass is already devastated generally and that fresh water management must include estuary salt water and therefore total water management. The Coorong must therefore be given life by immediately, albeit temporarily, removing the barrages that are presently killing it. PM Rudd and Min Wong, what might say in reply?