Water buyback won’t deliver
Jeremy Roberts & Siobhain Ryan; 24/5/08
One-third of the Murray-Darling water entitlements taxpayers paid $50 million for this week are not expected to deliver a single drop of water to the parched river system. And water from the other two-thirds may take years to arrive because of strings attached to the water rights bought. Federal Water Minister Penny Wong yesterday acknowledged her historic first buyback of water from irrigators under a $10billion Murray-Darling rescue package would fall considerably short of its headline 35billion litres in water savings. Amid industry predictions the $50 million buyback would return just 24 billion litres of water, Senator Wong shifted responsibility for any drop in savings to the states.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23749164-5013404,00.html
Graziers join fight to save Australia’s outback rivers
Tim Dick; 24/5/08
From Bob Morrish’s veranda, looking over a four-kilometre-long waterhole lined with coolibahs and red river gums, things appear wet. But looks are deceiving. The rest of his 32,000-hectare property near Windorah, in the outback in south-west Queensland, is drought stricken and bone dry. Other parts of the Coopers Creek catchment flooded this year, but his hasn’t since 1990. No flood means no feed, and no feed means no livelihood. He once ran 4000 cattle on two properties; now he has 400, on one. But the former CSIRO scientist and psychologist has bigger things on his mind: the preservation of Coopers Creek and the vast Lake Eyre basin in which it sits, Australia’s other massive river system. “There’s no argument now that the Murray-Darling is absolutely wrecked, and we don’t want that fate to happen to the Cooper,” Dr Morrish says.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/news/environment/graziers-join-fight-to-save-australias-outback-rivers/2008/05/23/1211183108504.html
Tags: Australia, Coopers Creek, Environment, Murray-Darling