We understand that you have reports of blue/green algae blooms in the Murray around the Purnong area.Your confirmation would be appreciated.
Ed09.02.07
16/02/07 No reply from SA Water
To Customer Service
SA Water
The most obvious problem we now have is that of spreading blue green algae blooms.It is our understanding that these blooms can probably only be controlled by toxic chemicals eg. copper sulphate, quite harmful to all animal life. There is no doubt that as the level drops & flow ceases that blooms will quickly develop.
Blooms have already been reported by Capt. Malcom Lowe in the Nildottie/Purnong region.This report is with SA Water, and we are seeking their confirmation.
clubmurray recommends that health officers consult immediately with boaties, hirees and tour organisers to develop an action plan to prepare for any outbreak of algae blooms
Ed. 09-02-07
Hello Ed, Keep up the good work. Chase those pollies, they treat us like mushrooms and can,t tell the difference between bullshit and gold.
The River level at Murray Bridge is calculated by the government to possibly fall by between one on two metres by april 08. If the drought contiues we could conceivably lose the entire Murray by October.
It is said that there is no question of "if there will be a algae bloom in the main stream this summer", the only unknown is when.
The whole riverbank is now in a precarious state, youv'e pointed out the undercutting at the new low level, and the danger of unknown snags being discovered, If the Cabinet had any guts and showed some leadership, powerboating in all forms would already be banned until levels return.
Ted A.
22nd Sept 2007
2006 NORMAL LEVEL
29th JANUARY 2008
NEW MEMBERS
ALWAYS WELCOME
To the Editor
While walking along the banks of the Murray near Long Island Reserve, I was quite concerned with the rubbish and dangerous objects within the water, I think council has an obligation to keep our river safe.
I would hate to see someone impaled on a star dropper just because no-one bothered to clean the rivers edge.
Jayne 28/04/08
Thanks Jayne, I have some photos to show you the enormity of the job the councils now have, and the progress they are making.
Ed
EXAMPLE OF INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIRING ATTENTION WITH LOW RIVER LEVELS
OUR MOTTO: DON'T TRY TO CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT TO SUIT YOURSELF.
CHANGE YOURSELF TO SUIT OUR ENVIRONMENT
CUTTING THROUGH WILLOWS TO ALLOW HOUSEBOAT MOORING.
IMAGINE THE AREA COVERED BY 110cms OF WATER AS PRIOR TO DROUGHT.
THE DANGER TO SWIMMING CHILDREN IS EXTREME.
THE YELLOW BUOY IS POSITIONED OVER A WRECK OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN OFF STURT RESERVE IN MURRAY BRIDGE.
AS THE WRECKAGE RISES ABOUT 1m FROM THE RIVERBED TO ABOUT 300mm OF THE SURFACE, IT POSES CONSIDERABLE DANGER TO RIVER USERS.
SWANPORT BRIDGE PYLONS EXPOSED JUN 08
Hi David, here are a few photos around Goolwa Port itself showing the drop in pool level. Since these photos were taken, the water has dropped a further 30-40 cms. The sternwheeler "Goolwa" can be walked around without getting wet feet. She normally has about 3-4 ft under her. The pool level has dropped about 5 1/2 feet here.
Picture shows the bridge footings well clear of the water.
Cheers,
EJ(Captain E. J. Thorp) 15/03/08
CLAYTON VIA MILANG SA JULY 2008
CLAYTON VIA MILANG SA JULY 2008
PRESS RELEASE
OUTRAGED CLAYTON BAY COMMUNITY
MEET TO DISCUSS ACTION
Hundreds of troubled residents in and around the sleepy little town of Clayton Bay on the banks of the Lower Murray River, held an urgent public meeting in the local Community Hall on Saturday 19th July to discuss the plight of the river.
Adrian Pederick MP spoke of his recent trip up the length of the Murray Darling basin, and reported on enormous and full irrigation dams and lakes up river. Others at the meeting angrily spoke of similar recent experiences where they also saw first hand, how the River system was being milked by multi- national interests. All supported recent demands by Senator Nick Xenophon that an immediate water audit must be held over the entire Murray Darling Basin, to establish what water is being held and where. Serious concern was also discussed over the hydraulic engineering and cost estimates for a proposed temporary dam across the river from Clayton Bay to Hindmarsh Island in addition to the fundamental environmental, social and water equity implications such a proposal will cause.
"With tens of thousands of tonnes of salt coming down the river each year, it needs to go somewhere, and because of inadequate environmental flows due to the over allocation of water resources amplified by the drought, the natural process of flushing this out to sea has been stopped. Removing the barrages is no answer because without the ongoing dredging of the Murray Mouth - which is only just keeping what is left of the Coorong alive - the river will die from the mouth up" said Henry Jones
It has been reported that good rains this year in the northern section of the Murray-Darling Basin have delivered 200,000 megalitres to Cubbie Station, which is 40 per cent of the station's storage capacity. Additionally, according to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, only about half of inflows reach the sea "under natural conditions". Latest figures from the agency reveal that only a fifth of the water entering the system makes it to the Murray River mouth, southeast of Adelaide. Double that volume of water, 11,520 gigalitres, the equivalent of nearly two million Olympic swimming pools, was being "diverted", the Murray-Darling Basin Commission estimates. NSW is the biggest water user, accounting for 6255 gigalitres annually. This is about half again the volume extracted by Victoria, and eight times that used by South Australia. With information like this, comments from governments saying "there is no water available" and "it is all due to climate change" are viewed with a great deal of skepticism by the Clayton Bay community.
The meeting agreed that local communities across the whole Basin need to stay united, and it also unanimously agreed to write to the Federal Government recommending that no further dams or weirs of any type be built from Lock 1 to the Barrages, and that more and significant environmental flows be immediately sent down the river to keep the system alive.
Clayton Bay residents will march on Parliament House at the upcoming rally on the 1st of August to show their resolve, that urgent action needs to be taken, and that the Federal Government needs to show its "green credentials" in this regard sooner rather than later, with this horrendous national disgrace.
Approved by the
Clayton Community Association Inc Executive.
Contact: Mike Galea 08 8537 0530
MILANG 08
Photo of holiday houseboat stranded in the middle of the river at Murray Bridge since 4 pm on Sunday.
This photo indicates the current low water situation, and also the fact that this operator had steered his craft into a dangerous area.
Just ahead of this boat is a "starboard hand" marker which the driver is obliged to keep on his right or "starboard" side.
Highlighted is the fact that hirees need only a car licence to hire a vessel, some in excess of 30 tons, carry a dozen or so passengers and are not required to possess any boating knowledge or skills.
This particular sand bar is within a kilometre of its home marina. It should be mandatory that details of conditions be passed to all river users.
Also highlighted is the fact that in this time of falling river levels, there is virtually nobody trained in recovery of craft.
With over 2500 houseboats and other smaller craft on the water it is imperative that regulations are enforced with infrastructure and procedures set up to offer assistance.
PHOTOS BY MARK
2007 ACID SULPHATE SOILS EXPOSED?
2008 REGROWTH ON ACID SULPHATE SOILS
BOATIES BEWARE. ISOLATED DANGER BUOY OFF STURT RESERVE IN MURRAY BRIDGE MAY BE OUT OF POSITION. (PHOTO 21/01/09)
The Lower Lakes has been a natural part of the River Murray for thousands of years. Evaporation from these Lakes is part of the natural watercycle, it is not a resource or commodity but water, that is part of a water cycle, to be nurtured and respected. Building dams is destroying our environmental inheritance, the public amenity and utility of our water ways and it is time, once and for all, we stood together to demand a fair share of the River Murray for South Australia under all conditions. We don't need more weirs we need better management of the entire Murray-Darling Basin.
Your submission does not address what I believe is the core issue, the privatisation of water itself by Governments who never asked or disclosed to the public the true nature of their plans and actions. Rather it has been simply referred to as water reform. Parliament has been misled and South Australians have been misled by a process that was initiated by COAG in 1994. I believe it has become the biggest scandal and disaster of our time, and in South Australia the scale exceeds the State Bank Disaster given its economic, social and environmental implications.
State governments are responsible for water licensing and setting allocations. They have also been responsible for setting up the new water market. Markets need demand and they also need water. One way of creating demand is to cut allocations more than what they need to be and one way to obtain water is to cut off areas deemed of no real economic value, such as the Lower Lakes.
The continuing drought has provided the perfect cover to establish the new water market to create demand. Water to the Lower Lakes was cut-off in early 2007. South Australian irrigators were allowed to purchase as much water as they need provided they had the financial resouces to do so. Of course this also means that the State Government did not act in their, and our best interests by cutting allocations in the first place, when water was clearly available. It is also clear this action was used in part to help facilitate the creation of the new water market. The South Australian government has then used these low flows to justify the actions being taken in the Lower Lakes. The water market itself has been allowed to florish. If this is not fraud I don't know what is.
Allocations in the past have been set in response to the non-availability of water. However the operation of the new water market in the MDB has exposed that there is water, but only as much as you can afford to buy. On the very day that Maude Barlow gave her speech in Sydney on 1st April 2009, American investors purchased 10 GL of high reliability water for $20 million which they planned to lease back to farmers. This is not right and is totally unacceptable to the Australian people. In 2007/08 when total water diversions from the MDB was a low 3,913 GL, the National Water Commission proudly announced in December 2008 in its first market report that over 2,515 GL of water was traded of which 1,594 GL was temporary water. Something is not right.
In the eleven years since 1996/97 the total volume of water diverted is approximately 97,824 GL and South Australia's share of this diversion was a meagre 6% or an average of 549 GL/year for a total of 6,037 GL. There are 65 major storages and 600,000 private dams in the MDB capable of diverting one and half times the average flow of every river in the basin and 25,560 km of irrigation supply and drainage channels. Clearly there are too many channels and all of the storage capacity of the entire basin should be used to meet an emergency to prioritise it's use.
Of course it is not just irrigators of South Australia who have been conned by this government but the people of Adelaide have also been conned into building a desalination plant it does not need. Adelaide Coastal Waters doesn't need a new source of pollution as it is already an environmental disaster caused by years of pollution from wastewater and stormwater. The priority for Government in Adelaide is water conservation to save Adelaide Coastal Waters and recycle as much stormwater and wastewater as possible. There is significant upside to this approach and now is the time to do it.
The same governments have allowed the unbundling of water licenses from property. These licenses were originally granted for free so water can be traded, be turned into a commodity for financial markets to add to growth and to make money from. State governments have also guaranteed the transfer of water that is bought and sold. Here in South Australia water is very simply privatised by the signature of the Minister when water allocation plans are approved without a whimper from Parliament. The public have made and continue to make substantial investments in the infrastructure of the Murray-Darling Basin. It should not be used to give the market a free ride.
Frankly the Rann Labor Government should resign over the mess it is making over water and the environment. South Australians need to demand both a National State of Emergency Commission to take over management of the MDB and a National Royal Commission to inquiry into its management. There are many questions to be answered; the public has been kept in the dark for too long. The water market should be immediately suspended and irrigators paid just compensation for any water diverted to meet higher order priorities. Put simply Australian domestic needs must come first before water is used for export markets, and above all, the river must be allowed to flow to the sea. The river should not need to pay for the water it needs for its ecosystems to survive.
South Australia also needs a Royal Commission to inquiry into the management of water and the environment. We also need a referendum on whether we want water to be privatised or held in public trust for the common good as intended by our founding fathers who prepared the Australian Constitution and specifically section 100. South Australians need to know where our politicians and their political parties stand on these issues, particularly whether water should be privatised or held as a public trust. This we must know before the next election.
Cheers,
John Caldecott
Convener
Water Action Coalition
Howdy Ben,
Wev'e been at this for 5 years.Don't tell me youv'e just realised that there may be votes in the Murray Environment issue.
Please view your email & reply on clubmurray.com.au
----- Original Message -----
From: Howieson, Benjamin
To: Undisclosed recipients:
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 4:57 PM
Subject: MURRAY PROTEST
MURRAY PROTEST
On the 20th of January, a Federal Community Cabinet meeting will be held in Adelaide. So I’m organising a Murray protest to be held outside, to let all the Federal ministers know what we think of their inaction on this national emergency.
An immediate Federal intervention can help save the Murray and get the floodwaters down to the Riverland and Lower Lakes.
Even if there is agreement to send some water down the Murray this will only be piecemeal - we need a permanent whole river solution instead of constant crisis management!
Let’s take our demands for immediate action right to the Prime Minister. All South Australians who care: turn up to the Community Cabinet meeting and send Rudd a rocket on the Murray.
When: 20th January 2009 at 4:30pm (assemble at 4pm)
Where: Norwood Morialta High School Oval, 505 The Parade Magill
Please pass this event on to your other networks, it is vital that we get enough people to get the attention of Rudd and Rann, and don't forget to bring signs stating what suburb or town you are from and if you like bring a bucket - some of those interstate Ministers might have brought some water.
If you’re interested in being a part of this, or want to volunteer to help organise the protest, contact my office on 8237 9278 or through email benjamin.howieson@parliament.sa.gov.au.
You can view information about this event on my website.
David Winderlich
Member of the Legislative Council
Parliament House
Adelaide SA 5000
Ph: (08) 8237 9278
Freecall: 1800 182 097
Fax: (08) 8410 4171
david@davidwinderlich.com
www.davidwinderlich.com