At last confirmation from experts with solid research experience!
For years, local experts with intimate indepth knowledge of the River, Lakes and Coorong, have been saying that the health of the River Murray is to be measured by the end of system flows. If water is not flowing out the Murray Mouth, then the system is over-allocated. When the Murray Mouth closed for the first time in millenia in 1981, that should have been the warning, but successive governments allowed more to be allocated than was flowing into the system. Now the crunch has come and the system is in crisis.
Engineering a crisis in a Ramsar wetland: the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth Australia, is as an independent assessment of the best available scientific evidence by a team of six scientists from the UNSW Australian Wetlands and Rivers Centre, the University of Adelaide and Flinders University. These leading researchers on the river and its ecology are critical of the long-term management of the wetlands.
Recommendations
1. As part of the Basin Plan, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) should establish as a target, a median annual flow at the barrages of at least 3,800 GL. Such a flow would restore low flows (below the median) when the system is most vulnerable to about one third of natural volume. This would represent an increase of about 700 GL (6%) in median annual flows at the barrages. This is considerably below historical levels, but probably is a minimum requirement for an estuarine-freshwater ecosystem in the Lower Lakes and, with management of the barrages, should restore conditions favourable for waterbird populations in the Coorong. Flow could also be managed to ensure fish passage and reinstate a range of floods.
2. In the short term, vigorous efforts are needed to recover fresh water for the Coorong Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth and riparian wetlands along the Murray below Lock 1 (Blanchetown). Claims that too little water is available demonstrate the low priority given to critical environmental needs. By implication, environmental needs on the scale of the CLLMM can be met only if there is a major flood or sustained rainfall to fill upstream reservoirs.
3. Water levels in Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert should be restored to +0.3 (approx. sea level) to +0.8 m AHD, and allowed to vary rather than being kept stable.
4. The Australian Government could commission an independent public review of scientific knowledge of the Coorong Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth and the science that underpins present and planned interventions (e.g. weirs). This should include a critical appraisal of the threat represented by acid sulfate soils (ASS) and methods for mitigation, as a basis for immediate action and later for adaptive management processes.
5. The proposal to build a ‘temporary’ weir across the Murray at Pomanda Island, at the junction of the River Murray and Lake Alexandrina should be abandoned. This is planned to secure a potable water supply for Adelaide and rural towns in the event of continued drought, or highly saline water in Lake Alexandrina, but its incidental ecological effects would be overwhelmingly negative. Part of the supply will be met by the recent decision to construct a desalination plant at Port Stanvac, Adelaide. Also, an increase in flows would potentially avoid any need for a weir.
6. The proposal to open the barrages and admit seawater to the Lower Lakes also should be abandoned, as it would irrevocably change the freshwater character of the lakes. If the proposal were implemented, a weir at Pomanda Island would be inevitable.
7. Immediate steps are needed to protect environmental values in the main body of Lake Alexandrina, which is continuing to regress and become more saline. Its decline will be accelerated by weir construction and pumping.
8. Lake Albert should be restored and maintained as a freshwater environment, and one option is to dig a channel between the lake and the Coorong therefore should be abandoned.
9. There should be adaptive governance, planning and management, requiring a ‘vision’, objectives and targets that are achievable, measurable and open to review. This should engage all stakeholders. Development of a long-term plan has commenced, under the aegis of the South Australian Department for Environment and Heritage, with funding from the Australian Government.
10. For long-term management of the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth, consideration should be given to forming a joint steering committee of the South Australian Department for Environment and Heritage, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the federal Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
11. Better hydrological data are needed for the Coorong Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth. This should include modelling inflows under scenarios that include a more equitable balance than prevails between the needs of the environment and human consumers. Modelling should include options from The Living Murray initiative, the buy-back program, water-use efficiency measures, sustainable diversion limits and Basin Plan arrangements, using historical flows and climate change scenarios.
12. The Australian Government should reconsider the Ramsar listing of the Coorong Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth with a view to a more realistic basis for sustainable management, should all the values for which the wetland was nominated no longer apply.
Professor Richard Kingsford from the University of NSW, who led the team, says: “History is unfortunately finally catching up and we are seeing one of Australia’s iconic wetlands moving rapidly towards a state of ecological collapse as a result of building dams and over-allocating this river.”
Another author, Associate Professor Keith Walker of The University of Adelaide, says: “We support some of the South Australian government’s initiatives. We believe that new weirs are not a solution, and will hinder rather than help the prospects for recovery. The last thing we need is to repeat past mistakes, disconnecting parts of the system with weirs, levees and other structures. It is one of the reasons why the ecological health of the Murray has declined.”
Read Engineering a crisis in a Ramsar wetland: the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth, Australia For the full report go to Engineering a Crisis
![Array](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2784/4143743526_b1b8f525e6_m.jpg "The "Goolwa Lake" is whipped up by winds.")
![Array](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2644/4086639081_c4dd5373aa_m.jpg ""Our Living Murray" exhibit visits Raukkan for the day. Photograph by Fernando M. Gonçalves")
