Hurry Save The Murray!

Another sweltering day but the community turned out in full force to listen to crusading water engineer, Steve Posselt, and to meet and greet the 17 person delegation of engineers from China who were travelling with him.

Steve Posselt was to be awarded the Eric Brier memorial award on November 13, 2009 in Brisbane for his services to the environment but he chose to travel on the bus with the delegation and to visit us in the Lower Lakes.

The award was granted to Posselt by Engineers Australia in recognition of the research that he has done into sustainable water management. Posselt sold his company, WaterGates in 2005 to fund a series of kayaking adventures through Australia’s river systems to explore the challenges of managing water sustainably first hand, and to bring attention to the real problems facing the nation.

The River, Lakes and Coorong Action Group Inc (RLCAG) celebrated Steve’s award with a presentation by Ruth Trigg who had organised the evening.

“The solutions being promoted for returning water to the Murray Darling, fundamentally misunderstand the problem,” Posselt said. “The river fails to reach the sea because we have dried out the landscape that once supplied it during dry years. It is not the amount of water in the channel we should focus on, it is the wetlands, ground water and forests.”

He believes that Major General Michael Jeffries and his work with farmer Peter Andrews may be the best hope that Australian agriculture has. “Agriculture is only a part of the problem, though, we need urban solutions as well,” he said.

We settled into enjoy the slides and discussion.

Mindy did a wonderful job of translation. After the initial greeting, Diane Bell reached the limit of her Chinese language.

Steve’s unique stance has been dynamically recorded in his book Cry Me a River published in March 2009 and available in most bookshops. The documentary of his journeys and observations will be released early in 2010.

Posselt used footage from the documentary as a recorded acceptance speech because he is leading an Austrade delegation of Chinese water engineers through China the Murray Darling River system. That footage can be viewed at www.kayak4earth.com, the website that documents his many journeys.