Australia's Leading Water Economist Would Eliminate Murray River Flows To Wetlands, Lakes, Dams

[hatrack]

WATER guru Mike Young has devised a drastic response to the crisis gripping the Murray-Darling: downsize the river system to cut loose irrigated areas and wetlands. Professor Young's tough-love recipe is sure to provoke howls of protest from farmers, business and environmentalists.

But the country's foremost water economist, who was ahead of the pack in predicting the emergency on the river, says parts of the existing system may have to be sacrificed if the Murray-Darling is to continue to flow. Professor Young, of Adelaide University and the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists on water and climate change issues, told The Weekend Australian that water loss to evaporation from the rivers now virtually equalled inflows, such was the decline in rainfall across the southern basin.

One option, requiring "careful, cold and technical" study, was to seal off areas where water pooled to limit evaporative losses and preserve the main river channels. This could include ecologically important wetlands, dams and lakes -- although Professor Young said he was not prepared to name which ones. The river should be reconfigured into a much smaller waterway than it was now, he said. "We are running the Murray-Darling with half the amount of water we used to have," Professor Young said from Spain. "And we need to realise that all the weirs and irrigation plans, the dams and ... the rest are structured for a river that is twice as big.

"We need to look carefully where there are downsizing opportunities for reconfiguration of the system, and do it in a quite cold, technical way, and do it publicly with an inquiry." At the bottom end of the Murray, low water levels or action by the South Australian Government to preserve river flows has already closed off 33 wetlands.

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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24302069-30417,00.html

[DCKit]

1. "We have to kill it to save it" - Eco-terrorist in chief. n/t