Moorabool River
Working together to secure flows
The month of June has seen two significant improvements in environmental water for the Moorabool River, long considered the state's most flow stressed.
The first was on 6 June when pumping from the Batesford Quarry commenced, promising to deliver between 2,500 and 3,000 ML (megalitres) per annum to the very lower section of the Moorabool River and then into the Barwon River and its RAMSAR wetlands at Lake Connewarre.
Windsor Inquiry
Reports
The Windsor-chaired Inquiry into the socio-economic impacts of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was announced in the aftermath of the release of the Guide to the proposed Basin Plan last October. In a bid to calm irrigator hysteria (who could forget the books burning in the streets?) Minister Simon Crean announced the Inquiry, with a committee made up of a cross-section of government, opposition and independent MPs.
World Environment Day Doorknock
Thank you!
In the lead-up to World Environment Day on Sunday, 5 June, Environment Victoria volunteers doorknocked areas of the suburbs of Werribee and Moonee Ponds.
Science and the Plan
Tracking the ordeal of science and the Basin Plan
“Worst-case scenario is that in five or six years' time when we have another drought we'll be in the same situation as we are now, we'll be seeing the same impacts as we have seen in the recent drought. We will have spent $10 billion. We'll have a hell of a lot more irrigation infrastructure that we have to support and pay for. I don't think it's a good outcome for anyone.”
Tim Stubbs, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists
MYTH: The Water Act is too focused on the environment – social and economic impacts have been left out
FACT: The Act states that the amount of water that can be taken out of rivers must be environmentally sustainable and based on best available science. Social and economic considerations are an essential part of deciding how to deliver and implement new levels of water extraction, and are required to be optimised.
In February, Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce instigated a Senate Inquiry into the Provisions of the Water Act (2007).
MYTH: Returning water to the environment will cost jobs and destroy regional communities.
What we need is a balance between economy and the environment.
FACT: For a healthy economy we need a healthy river.
It was the Danish Worker’s Union that first coined the term “No Jobs on a Dead Planet”. Now it is used by environmentalists, unionists, writers and businesses the world over.
MYTH: We can’t afford to return so much water to the environment
FACT: We can’t afford to continue business-as-usual. The costs and risks of not taking action must be heeded
Can’t afford to return so much water to the environment?!
Afford?! Afford what?
We can’t afford not to!
MYTH: It’s rained so the Murray-Darling Plan should be delayed or scrapped altogether
FACT: The Plan is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to turn things around to save the Murray and the communities that depend on it, forever
While the recent rains are a welcome reprieve, they’re on the tail-end of more than a decade of drought: a drought that had disastrous effects on wetlands and floodplain ecosystems, compounded by over-extraction of water from rivers.
MYTH: The Commonwealth Government will force irrigators to give up their water
FACT: The government only buys water from farmers who decide to sell it.1
To Save the Murray, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority says that up to 7,600 billion litres of water needs to be delivered to rivers.
But where is all this water going to come from?
