March 22nd is World Water Day. You may think such a day, has a broad perspective, but for some reason, this year the U.N has decided the day is simply about "better water, better jobs".

http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday

We can have more efficient use of water I agree, but with overpopulation worldwide, this issue is difficult to address.

Dams and weirs, diverting water for use in farms, industry and day-to-day urban living, with irrigation systems introduced on the River Murray has affected flows and quality of water. Salinity is now a problem, with salt interception schemes introduced, costing around $25 million dollars each.

The U.N focus on people and jobs on this matter, with no environmental focus - I give them 0/10. After all water doesn't come from nowhere.

Also will you use less water at home?

Nathan when Charles Sturt and Hamilton Hume discovered the darling river, just a little before irrigation started, it was too salty to drink, & too salty to be good for their livestock.

If greenies did not always have to twist facts, & lie to try to make their story more juicy, they would gain some credibility, rather than the disgust posts like this, & the false research it is based on produce.

The UN is as wet as water, and has no ability to do anything about anything, except shout out slogans, criticise the West, award the same respect to despots and undemocratic members which rightly belongs only to democracies, and generally acts as if it is a world government. In the interest of saving fresh water, the entire UN cabal should be drowned in sea water.

Did you know that the Earth loses a quantity of water equivalent to a small lake to the universe each year?

I won't use less water at home, I'll use more as I increase my storage capacity but for those in towns there is little incentive to use less as there is usually a minimum 'water rate' charge and if one doesn't use sufficient water to attract additional charges then there is no incentive to save.
Anyway, in the normal scheme of things, water cannot be wasted as nature recycles it, what is wasted is the cost of providing it.

Salinity is a measure of salts in soils and is transported with water movement. Large salt deposits are natural features of vast areas of Australia, stored in soils or in salt lakes for example.

Normally, deep roots of native plants absorb most elements of salty water (contained in groundwater below plant root zones). However, with vast vegetation clearance, this has made it easier for salt to rise to the surface and flow through waterways impacting on farms, drinking water and the environment.

http://www.environment.gov.au/water/quality/publications/factsheet-salinity-and-water-quality

With salt interception schemes (for example in South Australia) these schemes divert saline groundwater and drainage water before the water enters waterways. In most cases, a bore and pump system (pumps) the groundwater to a salt management basin some distance from the River Murray.

SA Water manages theses schemes on behalf of the Murray-Darling Basin Management Authority, with other salt interception schemes existing in other states.

Before European settlement, native vegetation helped keep the salt levels in balance. But human activity, especially in the past 100 years, including population growth which have had a huge impact, sees now around 80% of the Murray Darling basin's water now diverted for other use.

https://www.sawater.com.au/community-and-environment/the-river-murray/river-salinity

This is clearly not sustainable - and so I don't know why the U.N links clean water to jobs in this case.

Come on Nathan, we know all that, & can see another pile of garbage, which greens have used to try to stop irrigation simply because they are ratbags.

The river was salty when first discovered by Europeans, long before they cut down a single tree. The salt interception schemes were designed to deliver much less salt water than nature supplied, all for that South Oz artificial water sky lake they have built with their barrage.

If the greens were at all interested in nature they would be protesting until that monstrosity was pulled down. That they don't, & demand good useful water to fill it proves they are only interested in harming the productive, not in nature.

I use as much waster as I need, but never waste it! It is the most precious gift from God for us! Think about it!

Dear brownsnake174,

The Earth's water didn't come from God it came from outer space.

Dear Hasbeen,

Up to your old diversion tactics I see.

NathanJ posted about the Murray yet you banged on about the Darling.

Codswallop.

Yes they are part of the same system but the Darling comes from the North is infiltrated with salt springs which make up a proportion of its base flows. The Murray doesn't.

There is irrefutable evidence that salinity in the Murray was on the march until salinity schemes were introduced.

Salinity readings taken on the Murray at Morgan below the confluence with the Darling peaked some years at around 600EC in the 30s, 800EC in the 40s, 1000EC in the 50s, 1200EC in the 60s and remained high through until the 80s when salt mitigation works got underway in earnest.

Modelling shows that without these works the salinity levels would have been at record levels this century.
http://www.mdba.gov.au/sites/default/files/pubs/The-Basin-Plan-annual-report-2014-15_1.pdf

So yes farming practices and water diversions did lead to increased salt loads in the Murray River and anyone claiming otherwise is a charlatan.

Now I don't mind you having head in the sand on this stuff, that's just a product of ignorance which we can all accept, but when you go and accuse people of lying, twisting the facts, of writing disgusting posts with false research then you need to be pulled up, especially as you can probably be seen as wearing many of the same labels.

The Murray estuary has always been more or less salty. When the first missionary, George Taplin, set up a mission barely ten miles from the river mouth at Pt McLeay, the first thing he did was dig a well. Why ? The mission is on Lake Alexandrina. Because the Lake was brackish even then. When river flow was really low, the sea water reached up as far as Blanchetown: dolphins were seen fifty miles up the river. At least one whale got itself stranded in Lake Alexandrina. It's all in Taplin's Journal, on my web-site: www.firstsources.info

And by the way, the Coorong - despite a news item on the ABC this morning - is not fresh-water, but extremely saline.

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

Indeed it was.

Have you ever had the opportunity to visit Chinaman's Well on the Coorong?
http://lakeshub.com/2013/08/08/chinamens-well-on-the-coorong-2/

Being denied landing in Victoria because of the 10 pound poll tax imposed by the Victorian government many landed in SA before setting out overland.

Quite a history in the area.

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Hi Steele,

Yes, my son was an Aboriginal ranger down there in the early nineties.

Chinese were landed all along the south-east coast, and had to tramp overland into Victoria to the gold fields. One party was captured near Portland and held on a promontory for many months before being shipped back to China, but in the meantime, they turned the whole promontory into vegetable gardens. I hope they all eventually made it.

Joe.