As public submissions close on the environmental impact of the proposed Wellington dam, SA Liberal senator Simon Birmingham has called for a halt to a controversial pipeline which would draw even more water from the stressed river.
The Sugarloaf pipe would take an extra 75 billion litres of water a year from the Murray-Darling Basin to supply Melbourne.
This week Melbourne’s water levels dropped below the lowest point in recorded history. Victoria is planning a desalination plant, but that will not come on-line until 2012. The Sugarloaf pipe is meant to save the city from short-term crisis.
“The Victorian Government cannot introduce any further enforced restrictions without risking job losses,” said Melbourne water consultant Stephen Webster.
But Senator Birmingham said it was astonishing that the Victorian and Australian governments were persisting with the pipe as projections now show critical human needs might not be met in SA.
A Senate committee this week began an inquiry into a Bill designed to prevent the Victorian pipeline.
“Continuing record low inflows, and revelations the Murray River’s storage is about two-thirds of the level needed just to meet human demand, make it all the more astonishing that Victoria is going ahead with this pipeline and that the Rudd Government won’t stop it,” Senator Birmingham said.
A dam across the Murray at Wellington is now virtually certain. The sea would then be allowed to flood the Murray upstream to the dam, turning the Lower Lakes into an inland marine environment.
The State Government is desperate to avoid the project but sees few options. Established fruit and nut trees in the Riverland have been dying from lack of water – River Murray minister Karlene Maywald announced on Wednesday that irrigation allocations would remain unchanged at 18 per cent until at least July – but now SA may have to “borrow” water from NSW for critical human needs.
The chief of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Rob Freeman, admitted on Wednesday that these critical human needs in SA were “not 100 per cent guaranteed”.
Adelaide University professor Mike Young, often quoted as an expert on the Murray, this week suggested the river be confined to an un-natural, man-made narrow channel to prevent evaporative losses.
Critics of that plan within the government say that would be just a short away from putting the river into a covered, completely artificial watercourse, which they said could not happen in this generation.
The multi-national consortium AdelaideAqua has now begun work on the city’s one and-a-half billion dollar desalination plant at Port Stanvac.
The consortium, comprising McConnell Dowell Constructors, Abigroup Contractors, ACCIONA Agua and United Utilities Aust, has won the contract to design, build, operate and maintain the plant for up to 20 years.
It will supply a quarter of Adelaide’s water and drive up the price to presently-unreached records.
Greens MLC Mark Parnell wants the Government to release the contract, saying he feared it contained a ‘take or pay’ clause.
This would mean the consortium would still get paid even if normal flows returned to the Murray and the desalination plant was not needed to supply water.
Also this week, the Department for Environment and Heritage and local volunteers released a score of freshwater tortoises back into the wild following months of rehabilitation.
DEH’s Sally Roberts said that over the past year hundreds of short-necked and long-necked tortoises have been rescued from the Lower Lakes, most of them suffering from tubeworm infestation.
“Tubeworm in the Lower Lakes is a symptom of the rising salinity. Tubeworms can be fatal as they attach to the shell of the tortoises and create a hard calcium mass up to a few inches thick.
“This can weigh the tortoise down and cover the openings of the shell, which restricts the animal’s movement and capacity to feed.”
The animals were cleaned of tubeworm and released near Murray Bridge.
Meanwhile, new research shows evicting sheep and cattle from the Murray-Darling is probably the simplest, easiest way to save water.
Animal husbandry is the major water user in the basin.
The new study shows Australians would be much better off if they increased the use of kangaroos for everything from eco-tourism to human and pet food.
Sydney University’s Dr Adam Munn spent weeks tracking kangaroos and recording their energy requirements, concluding that the kangaroos have far less of an impact on the environment than sheep or cattle.
“We found that the kangaroos were consuming only around 13 per cent as much water per day as sheep,” said Dr Munn. “A sheep’s diet consists mainly of saltbush. Sheep feeding on saltbush will drink around 12 litres of water a day, as opposed to kangaroos which drink around 1.5 litres,” said Dr Munn.
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