Hurry Save The Murray!

The Federal Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, visited to the Lower Lakes today. Was he looking for a first-hand experience? To whom did he talk? Certainly not the people who live in Clayton Bay and who have been documenting the construction of the “regulator” and who have been seeking answers regarding the “science” on which it is based. No, the Minister paused in Clayton, had a milkshake, and motored onto Goolwa to extol the virtues of his work.

Well, the Minister has now seen at first hand the devastation caused by the Clayton Bay regulator. Will he now review his decisions to build the regulator without the need for an Environmental Impact Statement? Will he halt construction of the other regulators? Will he see the folly of proceeding with the Pomanda Weir and say no more weirs?

Had the Minister told us he was visiting, in the best tradition of our earlier meeting with the Jay Weatherill (the Minister who wasn’t there), we would have shown him what we see on a daily basis. Our message would have been both hopeful and critical.

1. The turtle project at the school at Milang. Minister, we would like you to listen to the students tell you how it is breaking their hearts as they rescue the tube-worm encrusted turtles. They did write to you, many times and your reply eventually was that turtles are not endangered species and therefore not within your jurisdiction But they are with ours. We see them dying daily. We rescue them.

2. We would have shown you the regrowth after the very strong recent rains. At sites that were put forward at the time of your decisions on the Referral for the emergency responses of regulators, such as the Wally’s Landing on the Finniss River, you could have seen how the acidified water is now perfectly healthy, the regrowth is lush and the frogs are in full voice.

3. We would have shown you the water coursing over the low crossing on the Finniss River and talked to you about the work that water does as it flows to the mouth and surges into Lake Alexandrina where it refreshes the increasingly saline water and is buffered by the alkaline water in the lake.

4. We would then have shown you the regulator that you signed off on as not a “Controlled Action”. We would have told you the emergency has passed. The first flush has come down the Finniss and Currency and it has not over-whelmed the Goolwa Channel. Strategic use of liming has been critical but so has the volume of water that has saturated the acid sulfate soils and diluted the dangerous acids. We know this from sites that are above the lime barriers. They remediated without intervention. We would have shown you the silt and mud that is clogging the foreshore, explained how the regulator has filled in the deepest refuge for native fish in a drought, and how the regulator has isolated Dunn’s Lagoon, an ecological hot spot of great significance.

But we did not have the opportunity. So here is our message in a nutshell: The River, Lakes and Coorong are a highly connected set of integrated waterways: lakes, river, tributaries, fresh, estuarine, saline, hyper saline, marine. The short-term emergency responses currently constructed and being contemplated are disconnecting the system. As the traditional owners, the Ngarrindjeri say, “All things are connected.” Please insist on an integrated, independently refereed, multi-disciplinary plan for recovery and management of the Lower Lakes.

The land is recovering.

Work with nature.

Work with local communities.