The Darling river fish kill.

The federal parliament last year passed changes to reduce the amount of water that had to be protected in the Murray Darling system.
The SA royal commissioner said it was illegal to consider factors other than the environment when deciding water flows. However, economic and political factors were considered. Are the current laws valid? Could be a legal challenge coming up.

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Originally Posted by bob10

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.

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Bob, here is a link that clearly shows the Darling is not a perennial stream. That it has run dry on numerous occasions.

Floods & Droughts - Discovering The Darling

How it came to be called a river belies the imagination. For most of its length and time it is a narrow shallow stream no bigger than Breakfast Creek in Brisbane.

[QUOTE]Bob, here is a link that clearly shows the Darling is not a perennial stream. That it has run dry on numerous occasions.[quote/]


Makes it almost impossible to recall that the River Steamers could operate at the top end but they did get caught out occasionally & were stuck there for many months in a waterhole.

One of the post mentioned that “ we can’t blame irrigators”
But they are a cause just the same and I know for a fact some can be blamed.
Some time ago I was at a large cotton farm.
The property had just been fined over 150k for exceeding their allocation.
The property manager felt the fine was inconsequential to the multi million dollar crop.

So here lies the real issue faced by the whole world.

Cash and more cash. Had the property not been owned and operated by a multinational, the impact of that fine may have been more significant and easy pickings for a bureaucracy too powerless or afraid to come after bigger fish.

Yes the rivers will run dry every so often but somethings got to shift in the management.

I feel cotton farms, of the density and size in this area are not sustainable.

I saw this when it aired last year. I think it highlights what is wrong in the irrigation sector. Like in every field of endeavour, there those that play fair and those that don't. Those that don't are a big part of the problem.

The 4 corners video in the first link contains swearing so you will need to copy and paste it and remove the spaces to view it

www. abc. net. au / 4corners/ pumped/ 8727826
www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-08/nsw-water-theft-barwon-darling-government-prosecuting/9527364

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Originally Posted by numpty

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.

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I wish I had the smarts to say that, well put. The other I left out, I really know very little about. But Cheers for that, we are killing our country thru ignorance. And most are blissfully unaware, or just don't care.

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Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

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How it came to be called a river belies the imagination. For most of its length and time it is a narrow shallow stream no bigger than Breakfast Creek in Brisbane.

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In Australia, water courses named rivers usually are named that because the person naming it thought it looked like a river when it was first seen. They are usually not going to hold off on naming it for a couple of years to see what it is like in a bad season. And if you have walked a few hundred kilometres across the

And I am sure you are well aware that the Thompson River merges with the Barcoo River to form Coopers Creek.

According to Wikipedia the Darling dried up forty-five times between 1885 and 1960.

My local river, the Talbragar, is now completely dry where I cross it, although there are still a few mudholes along it. I am not sure any of them near here are big enough to still have fish in. There is no significant irrigation upstream from here.

I'm reminded of when I was first working near Aramac in the early sixties. Some of our blokes took a local hire back to Brisbane with them on a field break. He was reported to have looked down in wonder at the size of the Brisbane river from Victoria Bridge - and turned and asked "Does it stop flowing in the dry season?".

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Originally Posted by SBD4

I saw this when it aired last year. I think it highlights what is wrong in the irrigation sector. Like in every field of endeavour, there those that play fair and those that don't. Those that don't are a big part of the problem.

The 4 corners video in the first link contains swearing so you will need to copy and paste it and remove the spaces to view it

www. abc. net. au / 4corners/ pumped/ 8727826
www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-08/nsw-water-theft-barwon-darling-government-prosecuting/9527364

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I am willing to bet a penny to a pound that the people in that post are just the tip of the iceberg because the whole system has the stench of corruption and theft about it.
FIX the river FIRST and then slowly and carefully work out EXACTLY how much water can be removed from the system and still maintain it as it was originally.
IF farms and businesses "Fold" because they cannot get all the water they "Want" from the river then so be it.
It IS sad and unfortunate that there will be people affected by this But in the Long run the health of the river is FAR more important and it's Not too late to be able to fix this But left as it is for much longer it will be near impossible to repair the damage done.

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Originally Posted by trout1105

I am willing to bet a penny to a pound that the people in that post are just the tip of the iceberg because the whole system has the stench of corruption and theft about it.
FIX the river FIRST and then slowly and carefully work out EXACTLY how much water can be removed from the system and still maintain it as it was originally.
IF farms and businesses "Fold" because they cannot get all the water they "Want" from the river then so be it.
It IS sad and unfortunate that there will be people affected by this But in the Long run the health of the river is FAR more important and it's Not too late to be able to fix this But left as it is for much longer it will be near impossible to repair the damage done.

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BRAVO. I could not have said it better.

Jusy logged onto disgrace book, on my camper trailer site and found this. I just can not believe it, but I guess it is true.

Sadly I would like to warn all campers on the Murray from Corowa to Echuca that the gastro bug is potentially coming down the river itself.
While camping over NY we had more than 10 + people get gastro (approx 40% of our campers) with one hospitalised for 2 days. One of our crew actually saw someone down stream empty their porta loo into the river and the nurses at Echuca hospital told us that they had reports that others were doing the same up river.
I cannot believe that people would even consider doing this in our waterways.
If you see anyone contaminating our river please report asap as we need to stop this behaviour so that we can all still enjoy the Mighty Murray River in the future.