Hurry Save The Murray!

We waited. Preliminary work costing approximately $14 million has already been undertaken in preparation for the proposed weir at Pomanda Island. What would the Federal Minister for the Environment decide with respect to the EIS? Would he give the go ahead? What conditions would be attached to the EIS? Would he heed the lessons learned from the Clayton dam/regulator and reject the EIS? Mr Garrett took the heat out of the debate by deciding he wanted further information before giving approval for, or rejecting, the proposed weir.

Meanwhile, Senator Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change and Water, announced a new (all male) expert scientific panel that would provide advice on the long-term management of the Coorong and Lower Lakes.

• Don Blackmore – former Chief Executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission
• Dr Andrew Herzceg – CSIRO Land and Water Hydrology Research Program
• Prof Gary Jones – Chief Executive of the eWater CRC
• Prof Richard Kingsford – School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales
• Assoc Prof David Paton – Head of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Adelaide Adjunct Assoc Prof
• Adjunct Assoc Prof Keith Walker – School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide.

We must now wait to see how the Garrett deferral and the Wong panel impact of the EIS.