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Water redirected to Coorong

Posted on October 15, 2009, 11:11pm

Millions of litres of water from the Upper South East drainage network were from this week being redirected to flow into the Coorong.

Environment Minister Jay Weatherill announced on Wednesday that 14 gigalitres of water were directed through the Morello Basin Wetland at Salt Creek and released into the Coorong for about three months in what he calls “emergency action” to protect the Coorong and Lakes at the Murray mouth.

It is the largest volume of water ever to be released into the Coorong from the South East drainage system, which has received above-average winter rains this year — one gigalitre is equal to one thousand million litres, or enough to fill 444 Olympic swimming pools.

Mr Weatherill said the Upper South East drainage system was designed to remediate salinated land, provide flood protection and return water to wetlands and the Coorong.

It includes a series of drains operated to use rainfall events to direct water to where it is needed most.

“This is precisely what the drain and floodways network is designed to do — to take advantage of rainfall and direct much-needed water to parched wetlands and the Coorong,” Mr Weatherill said.

Mr Weatherill said although South Australia takes just 7pc of Murray Darling-water, “we need to keep working towards a national solution that ensures fairness.”

“We only need to look at the state of the River Murray — still under drought conditions — to remind ourselves of the need for environmental flows down our rivers,” he said.

The State Government announced in July it would proceed with construction of the Bald Hill drain near Kingston, and floodways from the Lower South East that will replicate natural flows, so that even more water can be provided to the Coorong and wetlands.

The last time high volumes of water were released was in 2003-04 when 10.7 gigalitres provided refreshing flows to the Coorong.

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  1. Vivienne on November 3rd, 2009 1:51 pm 1

    Before white settlement the water flow had kept the Murray mouth open for about 7500 years – even in times of drought. The lakes were rarely salty, and the environment allowed turtles, brolgas, magpie geese and fish such as Murray cod and pygmy perch to flourish.
    Environmentalists say the seawater plan would contravene principles of the Ramsar Convention, of which Australia was a founding signatory, because member countries are required to maintain the ecological values of a listed wetland.
    This is an abysmal record of environmental destruction for an internationally recognised site!
    In South Australia and western Victoria, fruit trees are dying, grape vines are being ploughed up and a whole groups of towns are facing the fact that there may be no future for the industries that have supported them since the 19th century.
    Australia’s commercial asset — it’s food Murray Darling Food Bowl — clearly cannot sustain the commercialism that we since Colonialism have imposed on it. We need to provide for our own people, not exports that suck our ecological systems dry!
    The Coorong must not be flooded by sea!
    Next there will be land developers selling sea-side real estate where the waterbirds and turtles used to wade!

  2. Robert Stewart on November 4th, 2009 6:15 am 2

    Population growth is the total problem — a problem of consumption of resources and the means of producing them that is overwhelming the natural recovery. Left alone it will recover… When I was a kid, about 1937 standing with my brother on the sandhill south point of the mouth , the millions of fish fighting to get out to sea on the fast tidal flow into the lakes was an exciting spectacle. The lakes then were salt water at high tide and flushed out at low, so long as there was a river flow, and of course the 56 flood cleaned the area out fairly well. The old Greek fisherman baiting his long line (with mullet?) waited until the inflow reversed so that he could safely wade out into the stream to cast the baited long line for mulloway feeding in the outflow. No flow in the river? then flood it with sea water and the oxygenation will fix part of the lakes problem and time will fix the rest — it always has. The drought of 1914 reduced the Murray at Waikerie to a series of puddles that one could jump across and my grandfather related stories of the lakes and tide flows across the salt pans drying out to a stage where the salt could be scraped off the surface.
    Population interferes with the natural order of things because man wants to experiment, to discover sometime by intent and mostly by accident and having succeeded wants to sustain.. Another 2.8 billion over the next 40 years ( U,N,) will just add to the environmental problems caused by consumption that we know about. That is part of our evolution which got into the faster lane when some fool invented the wheel.
    A high tide surge of 1.2 meters in addition to the melting of the polar caps increasing the sea levels cannot be avoided. King Canute found out. What effect that might have is the subject of much deliberation for the low lying Pacific Island nations as it is for the Mayor of Glenelg. Such a level creating a flow into the lakes both at the present mouth and possibly at Maria Creek further south would also contravene the principles of the Ramsar Convention and be a very permanent situation long into the future..

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