Replace it with river/catchment based “boards” or councils partly elected by stakeholders, partly filled by expert water engineering State appointees – which can decide on the allocation and distribution of storage water.
The MDBA has been such a colossal failure with its laughable plan in 2010 to release 4,000GL of env flows per year – a plan that triggered much outrage. There were forced changes at the top and now political appointee Labor fixer Craig Knowles has been parachuted in to save the day and comes up with this compromise 2,750GL annual waste of water. People should reject this waste just as firmly as they rejected the 4,000GL figure. Have a look at their website – playing God here and there with water – pathetic. In the face of solid November and December rains which supplied colossal quantities of water to the MDB “environment” compared to this Green inspired leaking of valuable water from our dams.
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority will make minor pulsed releases from Dartmouth Reservoir over summer in an effort to improve water quality in the Mitta Mitta River.
Chief Executive Officer of the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, Dr Rhondda Dickson, today announced the release of an extra 20 GL of The Living Murray environmental water as part of a larger environmental watering currently underway in the Barmah–Millewa Forest icon site.
What a sick propaGreenda reference to – The “Living” Murray environmental water. I suppose if the MDBA does not supply the water – it must be dead water.
Simply abolish the Murray–Darling Basin Authority.
Well, the Wentworth group of scientists agrees with you about the report, Warwick, but their chief scientific adviser is Tim Flannery.
I would comment, but I am wondering why my spell checker redlines Tim Flannery, but allows Tim Flummery?
I see the Wentworth Group in the news saying – “…the Federal Government should scrap the draft Murray-Darling Basin plan, which they say “manipulated science” in an “attempt to engineer a predetermined political outcome.”
So the WG want to return to the 2010 plan to – as I think Warwick would say – waste 4000GL of water per year. Of course that was not based on “manipulated science” – Oh no.
Well, this is hilarious:
www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-18/scientists-want-manipulated-basin-plan-scrapped/3781476
Scientists want the MDB plan scrapped because “”The plan should clearly say which ones we don’t. Are we going to achieve our objectives? Are we going to have a healthy estuary? Are we going to have an open Murray mouth that is leading to a health estuary?”
Yet everyone seems to be silent about a carbon dioxide tax that has no empirical objectives, either. Ok.. so maybe not hilarious.. more like tragic.
I live in Jindabyne and witnessed the waste of water sent down the Snowy at the end of last year as a concession to the lunatic greens and their witless, useful idiots in ‘urban greensville’ Did it make much difference to anything? Who knows? But presumably there have been no noticeable improvements worthy of scientific or media attention.
The Murray Darling Basin has had huge inflows in the past year or so and the artificial freshwater sections in SA above their barrages are now productive again.Fantastic! But are scheduled water releases from a water system radically altered by dams and irrigation capable of restoring the characteristics of an unmodified river system.Who would know? This system had no ‘steady state’ characteristics. The nature of the Australian climate and the nature of the river system is such that extreems are the norm.
The suggestion by our august body of self appointed experts that there is a scientifically verifable original state for the system to return to may be true but it is probably not the utopian vision of the greens or of the scientific speculatore of the Macquarie Group.
Returning the river to its presettlement condition might be a case of being careful – you might just get what you ask for – which may well be far from the utopian vision.
With AGW,the decimation of education by postmodernists and all of the rest it is about time adults put back in control to fix up the mess.
Editors note: Yes we saw that utter waste of water on the news – someday I want to access all river gauging data for the Snowy and try and assess just what effect the releases had.