Thread: The Darling river fish kill.

Originally Posted by bob10

Aboriginal voices are absent in the Murray - Darling crisis. Could it have made a difference to what is shaping as the greatest environmental disaster in Australia's history? Europeans have effectively destroyed in 200 years what the indigenous people looked after for 60,000 years, give or take a few.

Aboriginal voices are missing from the Murray-Darling Basin crisis

Aboriginal people lived with and from the river, whereas we, in our short tenure, have raped the system for short term gain.

Bob, refer to the history books and read my post no. 15 in this thread. Rain is what is needed to refresh the river systems, and lots of it. Look at and think about the great western Qld. rivers, Barcoo, Thomson, Diamantina, Farrar's Creek, Cooper's Creek etc. On numbers of occasions since white settlement of this area began in the 1870's these rivers have been stone dry except for the few big permanent water holes like Conn Hole at Collingwood and Combo Hole at Dagworth. Within weeks after flooding rains fish appear and flocks of birds arrive, seagulls, pelicans, and so on.

Flooding rains in SW Qld. will refresh the Darling but nothing else.

That & other links make for extremely disturbing stuff especially the references to the AraL Sea which shocked me years ago when I first saw it as a documentary, & wondered how in the hell that happened not realising that it was soon to be happening here in GOC/The Lucky Country.

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

Bob, refer to the history books and read my post no. 15 in this thread. Rain is what is needed to refresh the river systems, and lots of it. Look at and think about the great western Qld. rivers, Barcoo, Thomson, Diamantina, Farrar's Creek, Cooper's Creek etc. On numbers of occasions since white settlement of this area began in the 1870's these rivers have been stone dry except for the few big permanent water holes like Conn Hole at Collingwood and Combo Hole at Dagworth. Within weeks after flooding rains fish appear and flocks of birds arrive, seagulls, pelicans, and so on.

Flooding rains in SW Qld. will refresh the Darling but nothing else.

This disaster has been caused by irrigators taking water from the system , legally or not, above the limit of what should have happened. The problem has been masked by the rains in the past. The drought has made it clear to one and all. Flooding rains will not save the system this time. The river is dying, and it is our fault. It is with a sense of shock, and shame, that it is becoming evident we may be witnessing an extinction event. Read the post " the Darling river is not meant to dry out " , to see the difference between this river system, and the ones you mention.

There are a few things that have contributed to the situation.
1 AFAIR it was in about 2002-2004 that water rights in NSW were separated from property title. The aim was to have more efficient use of water as many who had water rights did not use them.
At the same time farmers were also prevented from building dams of excessive size on their properties . a calculation was done re the normal rainfall and they were able to build a dam based on that.
This only applied to NSW.
I was sitting next to the bloke who was tasked with writing the regulation.
The idea was that if someone was going to use water for a more efficient use, let's say dairy cattle, they could buy water from a neighbor who was not using some or all of their entitlement.

I guess Blind Freddy could see that water use would rise, as previously unused water rights would now be used.

This was more applicable to the Darling , Murrumbidgee and Murray , however applied to all "controlled " rivers ie those with dams, which are controlled by a local water authority. The authority decides on the basis of river flow , dam storage, etc how much water the irrigators get. They have a "base" allocation and a bonus allocation if there is plenty of water, and in dry years they may get nothing.

So IMHO, The NSW system works reasonably well. The "wild cars" are the irrigators that block off the measurement devices, which prompted NSW Ag to digitize the meters, but the irrigators probably have a counter measure.
All pumps along the controlled rivers are supposed to be metered.

BTW, most of the cotton in NSW is grown in the Moree area. This is feed by water from the Namoi river which goes underground and dissipates in marshes. The water is pumped by big V8 diesel pumps from about 20metres underground. Watering is done by siphon, on laser levelled fields which have a small gradient. Underground drip was tried but didn't work with cotton as it is annual crop and the drip lines were damaged by removing the spent plants.
Cotton is one of the only crops grown that can return enough to attract corporate ownership.

Regards Philip A

Originally Posted by PhilipA

There are a few things that have contributed to the situation.
1 AFAIR it was in about 2002-2004 that water rights in NSW were separated from property title. The aim was to have more efficient use of water as many who had water rights did not use them.
At the same time farmers were also prevented from building dams of excessive size on their properties . a calculation was done re the normal rainfall and they were able to build a dam based on that.
This only applied to NSW.
I was sitting next to the bloke who was tasked with writing the regulation.
The idea was that if someone was going to use water for a more efficient use, let's say dairy cattle, they could buy water from a neighbor who was not using some or all of their entitlement.

I guess Blind Freddy could see that water use would rise, as previously unused water rights would now be used.

This was more applicable to the Darling , Murrumbidgee and Murray , however applied to all "controlled " rivers ie those with dams, which are controlled by a local water authority. The authority decides on the basis of river flow , dam storage, etc how much water the irrigators get. They have a "base" allocation and a bonus allocation if there is plenty of water, and in dry years they may get nothing.

So IMHO, The NSW system works reasonably well. The "wild cars" are the irrigators that block off the measurement devices, which prompted NSW Ag to digitize the meters, but the irrigators probably have a counter measure.
All pumps along the controlled rivers are supposed to be metered.

BTW, most of the cotton in NSW is grown in the Moree area. This is feed by water from the Namoi river which goes underground and dissipates in marshes. The water is pumped by big V8 diesel pumps from about 20metres underground. Watering is done by siphon, on laser levelled fields which have a small gradient. Underground drip was tried but didn't work with cotton as it is annual crop and the drip lines were damaged by removing the spent plants.
Cotton is one of the only crops grown that can return enough to attract corporate ownership.

Regards Philip A

Yes Philip.

But, and it's a big but, this all relies on the honesty of firstly the water users and also the water allocators. "Some" of the former have been stealing water and not just piddling amounts, but huge quantities, and the latter have over allocated for decades. It is a well known fact even amongst the users, that the Macquarie River is and has been unable to sustain the draw off, but nobody is prepared to accept that fact and that they need to and must take less.

Nature can handle what happens in nature, but human intervention on such a grand scale cannot be fixed by rainfall.

Personally, I don't believe cotton nor rice is a sustainable crop in such an arid country as Australia.

Hear hear. Spot on numpty, imho, but you failed to mention "The Greed Factor".

Personally, I don't believe cotton nor rice is a sustainable crop in such an arid country as Australia.

Cotton likes low humidity and places like Moree are ideal for cotton. There is also quite a bit of dryland cotton grown around Narrabri and Wee Waa when the soil profile is full.

A lot of research has been made into reducing the water level in paddies to grow rice as 25MM of water height means a saving of 10% of total water. NSW ag has been working for years on this.

So what are we to do? Say to farmers that they can no longer grow rice? There are thousands of immigrant ( lots of Italians among them) families in the Riverina who have grown rice for decades . Rice is predominantly a small holder crop and sold to and through Ricegrowers Coop. They started their farms in good faith that they would be given a water allocation. Griffith was built of rice but now has diversified to wine to some extent. It is the availability of water that opened up the area and now hundreds of thousands of people live there and depend on water. Without water it is a desert.
You might as well say that hey we don't need citrus either as it depends on water in NSW and in SA. Again these are mainly small holdings with many amalgamated soldier settlement properties.

Really some areas that cotton grows in are unsuitable for other crops. I once visited Lake Wyangan area where a bloke was trying to grow onions for export. He had 3 days at 47C and all the onions cooked in the ground despite having his pivot on. Cotton thrives in that sort of heat.

I was personally involved in trying to convert cotton growers in Moree to grow other crops, and the ideal one in oranges. The area has more sun units than anywhere else and the oranges would be fabulous. However when you tell an annual cropper like a cotton grower that he has to wait 5 years to get a crop, they walk away as none of them have the financial depth to become a horticulturist.

It's easy to say but the eggs were broken many years ago.

Regards Philip A