Darling River (Australia) Takes One-Two Punch From Drought, Irrigators

[hatrack]

EDIT

Although the national focus has been on the dire state of the Murray river in the present drought afflicting eastern Australia, a recent report has found the Darling is equally troubled. State of the Darling, released by the Murray-Darling Basin Commission last month, concludes the impact of increased water use due to northern development in the Darling basin, with its many tributaries, has been substantial, "and changes are comparable in scale with those that have occurred on the Murray".

It says average flow into the Darling has been reduced by one-third, and extractions from the Darling and evaporation from storage water held in Menindee Lakes further reduce flows. "The result is that average outflows from the Darling to the Murray are now less than half the volume they would be under natural conditions," the report says.

For a river, the Darling makes a great cricket pitch. Several weeks ago locals met on the dry Darling bed north of Wilcannia. Under the shade of gums they played cricket: the east side of the river v the west. Justin McClure, who lives at Kallara station, which has a Darling River frontage of about 60km, says despite the circumstances "it was a magic day". It showed the community could pull something good out of adversity. "We are a very strong little community," McClure says. Etheridge says the river community's stoicism has made it too ready to accept changes to the river. "There has been a gross transfer of water use to upstream, which is equivalent to a gross transfer of wealth upstream. It has happened slowly. We are probably guilty of letting it happen and not doing as much about it as we should have."

McClure explains the Darling is an event river, meaning there are surges of water rather than continuing high flow, and the trouble is the big flow events don't happen these days. Etheridge recalls a flow event in 2004 "that should have been a flood" but wasn't because so much water had been siphoned off upstream. That time, the Balonne and Culgoa rivers upstream, which help feed the Darling, alone took 366 gigalitres (billion litres) of water. "Our river came within 1m of the top of the bank" but no further, he says. If his place had flooded, "it would have saved us a lot of money" in feeding stock.

EDIT

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21631696-30417,00.html?from=public_rss

[phantom power]

1. It's funny how that works.

How, during a drought, rivers get lower, but then farmers also need to irrigate more. So they take more water from the river. Yeah.

[NNadir]

2. This river is considered one of the world's ten most threatened rivers.

From my perspective, it is difficult to imagine that all rivers aren't threatened.

I live near the Delaware River, though, and it looks OK, although it's been flooding a lot lately. Of course when it floods, it carries a lot of garbage. In fact a bridge near here was damaged by a a floating commercial trash bin.

The rivers are what will go first, and everything else will follow in short order.