Tracing the epic journey of rivers from source to sea highlights the complexities of managing water in Australia as drought and flood extremes intensify.
Leanne recognises the pain of communities and neighbours upstream impacted by flooding and says it's a privilege to be on the marshes during this boom."The wetland is a stone's throw from our kitchen window … We'll look out the kitchen window and see the straw necked ibis, the sacred ibis, the glossy ibis. They'll be foraging around on our lawn in quite large numbers, and to look out my kitchen window and see that it just makes my heart sing.
"If we're serious about adapting to climate change, we need to move the environmental water holding further up the priority pyramid and we need to have a look at town water security for growing cities."Bill Johnson is a former director of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and began his career as a park ranger on the Macquarie Marshes.
"What I think is problematic is the slowness to adjust to changing circumstances, the denial that circumstances have changed. I think we know what to do but we are probably reluctant, as a community, to do it."Tensions between the environment, town water security and irrigators makes water reform a difficult task.
"In the highly unlikely event of a new record-low inflow sequence, this assumed future inflow will not have eventuated, and account water will not be supported by physical water in storage. A small risk is, therefore; taken when allocating water," the guide states. Downstream communities, wetlands and lakes endured prolonged suffering during the last drought. Now they're dealing with floods.
"All of that initial water that would have gone down the river system goes into those dams to fill them up, but it's not until we get to this year, 2022, where the dams are spilling … that the effect of the dam is no longer working because they're all full. The river system has changed dramatically over time, as dams were built, irrigation and development increased and the use of flood plains changed."It seems a bit of a mismatch between what the flow forecasts are saying and what we're seeing on ground," says Chrissie Bloss, manager of water delivery in the South Australian Department for Environment and Water.
For a long time, traditional owners up and down the basin say they've been excluded from government policies and contemporary water management. "We could be very well in a drought within the next year and a half to two years. For all we know, with this current climate change, changing so quickly and so vastly, it's very hard to model what that would look like. And the reality is in the Murray-Darling Basin, it is an over-allocated system already.
"With river regulation those bounces aren't as high because there's less water in the system and less flooding … the times when it's not bouncing, the dry times are more severe, so they're flatlining for longer."He says small-to-moderate floods aren't nearly as extensive or as frequent as they used to be, the long-term impacts of which are yet to be determined.
"As soon as you build the dam, or enlarge a dam, you have less water because you get evaporation. Out of Burrendong the evaporation is about 10 per cent of the water so immediately you get less water for a dam. Adelaide water consultant Dr Erin Smith is more optimistic about how Australia is responding to the dramatic changes to water supply.
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