Persistent low flow is the cause of Murray Mouth closures. 

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 - [Pictures Courtesy of  The Murray-Darling Basin Commission ]

 
  Ok! If you think the state of the Murray Mouth as depicted in the photographs above, is indicative of a pretty sick river. Well! In 2009, in spite of millions of taxpayers dollars having been spent, on "BAND-AID" fixes, nothing has changed! ... ... ... viz, 2006: A lot of talk, a lot of promises, a lot of agreements in principle, but NO additional water flows down the Murray. ... 2007: The lowest rainfall in 80-odd years, zero water flow is recorded in The Murray, water restrictions are implemented and, in Adelaide, suburban gardens suffer; people start to think, "Gosh! Maybe this is serious". ... ... ... Still, nothing is done!

FEEL FREE TO CLICK HERE AND SEE/HEAR HOW THE MURRAY'S DEMISE HAS BEEN ALLOWED TO CONTINUE UNABATED OVER THE INTERVENING YEARS.

And! While they think about it. The Murray continues to teeter on the brink of extinction as the Murray Mouth lurches ever onward towards permanent closure, which it is currently doing part-time, as it did in 1982 and numerously threatened to do so throughout 1995-96. - It is simply a matter of time before it closes full-time. - When that does happen, and it will, and it is only a matter of time, the Coorong will be a stagnant saline backwater devoid of marine life.
- No longer can anyone sustain a rational arguement against this unmistakable fact. Throughout 2005-06, the salt content in the Coorong increased dramatically. The region's food-chain cycle has been thrown into turmoil, causing several fish species to become extinct and annual bird migration patterns, that had endured for centuries, have gone!
-The River is destined to become a long chain of billabongs, which sometimes interconnect and flow into a saline lake named Lake Alexandrina, in a similar manner to how Cooper Creek nowadays sometimes flows into Lake Eyre.

- It is ENTIRELY due to the unsustainable volume of water, which humans continue to bleed from the Murray/Darling system, each and every year.

If humans were to loose a similar percentage of our body's blood supply. We would be a long time dead.

It is an astonishing inditement on the Human race that we, the only creatures on this planet who are naive enough to believe that we posses intelligence. Cannot learn from past mistakes and recognise the long-term disruption to our community, plus the devastating costs we will inevitably incur, when we 'bleed' a major river system to death.

The 'Yanks' tried it on the Colorado River and now have a mammoth environmental problem on their hands. That's right! The Colorado River, the one that carved out the world renown, Grand Canyon. The one that, 'once upon a time', had its delta at the head of Golfo de California Mexico, where it nowadays, sometimes 'trickles' into the sea.
The 'Soviets' also did-it, but they didn't muck-around. They didn't just shrink a river or lake they catastroph-ised a whole damn "SEA". ... That's right a 66,000 Km² sea, the 'Aral Sea', which straddles the border between Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan, eastern USSR. A sea that once upon a time supported a fishing industry of such magnitude that a cannery was built to process the overabundance of the fish catch. We are not talking about a 'sardine' size lake here, like Lake Alexandrina! We are talking about a SEA that compares in size to the total area of St Vincent & Spencer Gulfs put together. A sea that supported a town roughly the size of Port Lincoln SA, with a look-alike fishing fleet & fishing industry, where the tide went out and never came back. - What once was a popular beachside holiday-resort & port facility is nowadays a ghost town, with the rusting hulks of fishing vessels scattered throughout the sand dunes that border what is nowadays a dusty, arid and windswept seabed, which extends beyond the horizon.

- - And! What was the cause of this disaster? - Cotton! - That's right, the former USSR bled the Aral Sea's two main tributaries, the Amu Darya & the Syr Darya, to death, so they could irrigate their cotton crops. The situation was worsened by the fact that the Soviets used chemical fertilisers and DDT insect control measures that have left a cocktail of deadly toxins in the sediment of the now arid seabed. - Nowadays, prevailing winds blow across the waterless seabed whipping the sediment up into dust storms, which so contaminate the atmosphere that Tuberculosis is now endemic in the region; and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. A 'TB' patient is no sooner cured than they get reinfected again from the ever-present airborne toxins. Human life expectancy in the region has dropped to around 45-years and declining. The 20-odd million people, equivalent to the entire population of Australia, living in the countries surrounding the Aral, are nowadays suffering from serious health problems. It is NOT an environment where anyone would choose to live, NOT if they wish to live past 45 years of age, that is! You wouldn’t even want to drive through the region without wearing a surgical mask. – You think I’m kidding? Well it’s about time you did some catching up my friend!!! – It took the Soviets only 50 years, from start to finish, to accomplish the irreversible destruction of a region’s environment.

- Thankfully! In Australia, we are more cautious about using potentially harmful chemical insecticides and fertilisers. There remains, however, the continuing gluttonous over-use of the Murray water resource, plus the unwelcome side effect of irrigation, the salt problem. - Give us another 50 years and Australians too, will join that dubious club of environmental assassins who have overused a natural resource to death. All in the name of national productivity and job creation, of course, as it always is whenever greed and the environment are in conflict.

It's a hollow argument, however. The expense incurred in reducing the amount of water we currently suck out of the Murray & Darling Rivers by embarking on a, e.g. 10-to-15 year, plan to relocate 20% of the fruit growing infrastructure and 50% of the cotton growing infrastructure to either one or other of the underground freshwater sources located in Western Australia, or further north to access water from Lake Argyle, would amount to peanuts, when compared to the ultimate cost WE WILL EVENTUALLY PAY for continuing with our current misuse of Murray/Darling water. - The absurdity is, it is either RELOCATE NOW OR 'WITHER ON THE VINE'; -FOR THESE ARE THE ONLY TWO CHOICES WE GOT!! - Whether it be a planned relocation of some agricultural interests NOW! - Or an enforced relocation LATER, when the soils and rivers are so polluted, they will no longer sustain anything like the current level of agriculture.

Reduce the quantity of water we suck out of the river systen NOW!
Any other 'Band-Aid' fixes are a waste of money and, more importantly, a waste of time.

The nearsighted cotton growers, of course, argue that they only take "floodwater" from the Darling, which would otherwise "go to waste". Which only underscores their blinkered, self-serving vision. For it is that very "floodwater", "going to waste" as they put it, that creates the essential "flushing" mechanism, which washes huge quantities of salt and other pollutants out of the Murray/Darling system. While at the same time reinvigorating the freshwater lagoons and backwaters, which are so essential for the general health of the flora, fauna and of the entire river system.

In South Australia today there are still a few elderly Riverland residents who remember when, as teenagers, they could stand up to their waist in the River Murray and still see their feet on the bottom. By comparison today, if you dip your arm up to the wrist into the same river, you cannot see the tips of your fingers because the water is so muddied. And that's only the visible pollution! Dissolved pollutants can not be seen with the naked eye, as in seawater, where you cannot see the salt, but you damn well know it's there when you taste it. === Nowadays I would hesitate to taste Murray River water.

The cotton growers are, of course, not the only vandals of this water resource. They are merely the most recent arrivals. - Also the Darling floods are traditionally the "muddiest" of all, due to the terrain through which they flow and there's precious little we humans can do about that. - What the river really needs is more of the clean water from the snowmelt off the NSW and Victorian highlands. And! that will ONLY come about by a REDUCTION in the quantity of water currently bled-off for irrigation and township supply. Irrigators on the River Murray have traditionally used demonstrably excessive amounts of water to irrigate their crops. And Yes! There are at the present research programs going-on in most of the Murray's irrigation districts aimed at improving the efficient use of irrigation water and thereby reduce the total usage. We Hope!!!! --- But these efforts are not nearly progressing fast enough to counter, much-less turn-back, the mounting depravation being committed on the river NOW!

As for the townships. Country residents generally are a fairly rainwater conscious bunch of people and river-community dwellers are no exception. Saving there are likely to be marginal in the short term at-least. Nevertheless, on this "the driest continent on the planet". A "Smart Australia" OUGHT to be "leading the world" with innovative "best practices" for sustainable living in a semi-arid environment, and we are NOT!!! Yet every Australian citizen, who is capable of pondering this problem, KNOWS!!! We all ought to be making much better use of domestic rainwater storage and reticulation systems. We also know that modern biodegradable toilet systems provide a much more water-efficient means of hygienic human waste disposal, than our current water-guzzling flush toilets. These options, though there can be no-argument about their water conservation advantages, would, however, require a significant shift in social attitudes to implement. - Nevertheless, in country communities there is scope for substantial saving in water used in effluent disposal, and there is enormous scope for saving mains water used in city areas.

"1996 HOW TO FIX-IT!!!!": - In the case of agriculture. The task of implementing a, no-exception, freeze on the quantity of water currently extracted from the Murray\Darling system, in collusion with the task of relocating agricultural interests, across state borders if necessary, requires Federal Government intervention. A "Smart Australia", therefore, needs to identify alternative, pioneering style farming, irrigation and aquaculture projects around the nation.
 ~ ~ A workable starting point would be the Ord River project in W. A.. Where the freshwater Lake Argyle, created when they dammed the Ord River, and which nowadays holds nine (9) times the volume of water in Sydney Harbour, is currently very much under utilised.
 ~ ~ Also! More innovative and challenging alternatives for dry land farming, such as kangaroo farming, should NOT be capriciously and prematurely dismissed. Congratulations need to go to United Game Processors at Charleville for their foresight in this area. However, more could be done. For example, using modern technology to astutely spy on, and control, remotely located bores, in order to bring kangaroos to the grazier, rather than the grazier going bush to find the kangaroos, could prove to be not only worthwhile, but also very environmentally friendly. If need be, Sporting Shooter Clubs, and/or Army Reservists, could be involved in the 'kill' and Conservation Dept. control/issue 'silencers' to increase the effectiveness of same.
 ~ ~ Furthermore! A calculated number of "sweetheart deals" needs to be made available to those irrigators who are prepared to relocate, involving a property-for-property swap and five (hell why not make it fifteen!) tax-free years. Those interested could swap their current Murray/Darling Basin enterprise, for whichever of the profitably & viable enterprises were made available to them. The "traded-in" real estate would, thereafter, be rehabilitated back to bushland or be made available for ONLY 'dry-land' farming, with the forfeited water allocation being added-to, and thereby increase FOREVER, the "no exception" quantity of water allocated to mainstream flow. This process to continue UNTIL NO MORE THAN 60%, INSTEAD OF THE CURRENT 80%, OF MURRAY- DARLING WATER IS DIVERTED FOR IRRIGATION AND TOWNSHIP USAGE.

As for domestic usage: - No doubt the old 10,000-litre backyard water tank can be a bit of an eyesore. But the scope for design innovation in how we collect and recycle rainwater, wastewater and dispose of our effluent is vast. Also! Australia does posses the homegrown engineers architects  etc., capable of designing and building a range of new-era Conservation Conscious Dwellings and, in the process, show the rest of the world how to live conservatively in the 21^st Century. We already know that Spanish and Mediterranean influence houses are considerably more suited to our Australian climate than are the "boxes with peaked roof" models we inherited from northern Europe. As it is, architects nowadays include things like en-suite bathrooms, a study, a garage, carports & patio, under the main roof and they are doing it in much greater numbers than was the case 20-odd years ago. Why then, can't they also integrate a water storage capacity into the floor plan of new homes? Done at the design stage it would not be a hugely expensive thing to do.
 - The CSIRO and/or Australian National University have the kind of experts needed to design the kind of 'utility-integrated', aesthetically attractive, competitively priced dwellings Australia requires. The main object being to make Australian homes more "water economical" than they currently are. = An industry sponsored, new-era CCD home display centre, erected somewhere within the ACT and periodically updated. Open for public inspection as a walk through as well as via cyberspace. Would be a very practical and useful Starting Point:

 - As for 'updating' social attitudes! --- Currently all of us are, one way or another, PAYING DOLLARS for the water-wasting lifestyle we lead. The quickest and best way to change that is to provide a clear and obvious dollar saving approach to a water-conserving alternative. -- The current "water rates" system is difficult to comprehend and fails to provide any obvious incentive to conserve water. Whereas, although politically unpopular, a "National Conservation Tax on Mains Water" will achieve it. A National Mains Water "Pay for what you Use" scheme, which clearly shows how you can save money by using less Mains Water, would be the quickest and surest way of changing social attitudes. The object being, NOT to raise more TAX dollars, but to reduce water wastage for the Greater Good of the nation: - Obviously ALL political parties would have to support such a proposal. - Historically, however, political bipartisan agreement in Australia, on matters other than parliamentarian's salaries, is woeful! - Politicians will still be arguing over this water conservation issue in 2050; and the Murray will be dead by then!!!!

Nonetheless, a scheme such as the above could only materialise from Federal Government Initiatives and, as change in "social attitudes" takes considerably longer than the elected term of any single Government, the on-going management of such a scheme would have to be invested in a non-politically affiliated Commission. Much like the old Snowy Mountains Authority Commission, or perhaps a re-vamped and re-badged Murray Darling Basin Commission. With a mandate to manage and coordinating the overall plan for the betterment of the nation and with the muscle to override the self-serving interests of regional groups and/or individuals: - By so doing, Australia could become the first Nation in the World to successfully resuscitate a mortally ill major river system. It would, however, require continuous, vigilant and diligent policing to keep it that way: - Me thinks! The Thames River rehabilitation project in the UK would fade by comparison.