Murray Darling catchment management incompetence

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Craven Morehead said:
I fear you may be right as there is a whole heap of rabbit burrows both sides don't want looked into. But I hope you're wrong.
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& all of them should be pursued vigorously. Strange how some can only see one side of politics to blame - sadly, but really there are crooks in gaol across the country from both sides, yes both sides ... fancy that?

From Aunty:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02...ies-water-court-murray-darling-basin/10808384
The cotton grower, the water minister, the pumping ban and the broken meter
By national regional affairs reporter Anna Henderson

Updated about 4 hours agoThu 14 Feb 2019, 12:21pm
 
It's not incompetence ,it's a straight out criminal.While criminals like Barnaby Joyce get away with murder, people are trying to save species from extinction.It should go to court and Barnaby Joyce and his mates should be prosecuted.
 

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Craven Morehead said:
Where is all the water?
Exhibit A is below your Honour.
It's being taken legally, or illegally, from way upstream, as I have stated here on numerous occasions.
I can absolutely assure you that if an embargo is in place you bloody well know about it. You are bombarded with emails, SMS's etc, your neighbours talk about it. It's the news of the week/month/year.
It's the same if you have a high water event, not a flood, but a river is flowing above normal levels and you have a flood harvest license. You are again given many notifications that you can turn your pumps on.
The meter isn't working? F***ing spare me. It's the cocky's responsibility to ensure that it is working and immediately report a fault. You are duty bound to report how many megs you pump at any given time. The water authority then come in every 6 months to formally substantiate your 'honesty'. Just like councils do on domestic water meters.
Did the Water Minister publicly state that an embargo had been lifted when, in fact, it wasn't?
I find that hard to believe, but if true, it goes even further to the fact of blatant dishonesty and corruption.
I 'may" know the cocky in question here, so it's best I don't comment on his character.
Overall, this is only a small amount of water, but it all adds up over the entire northern part of the basin.

On May 16, while the ban on pumping was in place, Barlow instructed a member of staff to switch on the pumps that took water from the Barwon River and delivered it to the dam.

The two pumps whirred continuously for two days, until Barlow got a phone call.

It was the Senior Water Regulation Officer from river operator WaterNSW, Richard Wheatley, alerting Barlow that there was a ban in place.

Within an hour the pumps were powered down. It's estimated Barlow had taken about 381.62 megalitres of water. To put that amount in context, a megalitre is 1 million litres of water.

Barlow had moved the equivalent of — at an estimate — almost 153 Olympic swimming pools of water from the river into his private storage.

The pumps on Burren Downs were connected to a meter, which had been installed to record the water take.

The meter was supposed to show how much of the water licence had been used up — including for billing purposes — but it was not working properly.

Later that same month on May 29, the ban on pumping was lifted.

That evening Barlow organised the pumps to be switched back on at Burren Downs.

This time they operated for four days.

It's estimated the take was about 512.52 megalitres.

While pumping was allowed in this instance, the take in both cases can only be an estimate.

That is because the water meter, connected to the pumps, did not record a positive reading in either case.




https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02...ies-water-court-murray-darling-basin/10808384
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There's a huge problem with yabbies in irrigation channels these days. Have heard of so many farmers having yabbies dig their burrows straight between irrigation channels and link them, makes it impossible to stop one from draining into the other. And the weird thing is that they usually dig near horizontally and always around where the water meter is, like somehow the water meter attracts them to that location? It's weird.

Very hard to notice for farmers too, most don't see it until it gets pointed out by a compliance officer.
 
_Swoon said:
There's a huge problem with yabbies in irrigation channels these days. Have heard of so many farmers having yabbies dig their burrows straight between irrigation channels and link them, makes it impossible to stop one from draining into the other. And the weird thing is that they usually dig near horizontally and always around where the water meter is, like somehow the water meter attracts them to that location? It's weird.

Very hard to notice for farmers too, most don't see it until it gets pointed out by a compliance officer.
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Never heard of it.
Most, if not all, meters are at the source, so I'm not really understanding what you're saying.
 

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Craven Morehead said:
Never heard of it.
Most, if not all, meters are at the source, so I'm not really understanding what you're saying.
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Something I saw a lot of when I did contracting for MIL; farmers would put small bores parallel to the water meter so they could draw down water "for free" and would blame the yabbies when it was identified.
 
_Swoon said:
Something I saw a lot of when I did contracting for MIL; farmers would put small bores parallel to the water meter so they could draw down water "for free" and would blame the yabbies when it was identified.
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Ahh, now I understand. I thought you were referring to water drawn from a river.
 
Not sure if this one was posted. Australian Academy of Science report released this morning:

1550457881520.png

SUMMARY FINDINGS The Academy Panel made the following findings, illustrated in Figure 1:
1. The three fish kills that occurred in rapid succession over December 2018 and January 2019 were unusual in the combination of their severity, impact on large, 20-year-old and older Murray cod, and association with low flows.

2. The immediate cause of the fish deaths was stratification and then mixing of a large volume of oxygen-depleted bottom water with the smaller oxygenated surface layer. Conditions such as low- and no-flows and hot temperatures favoured growth of large blue-green algae blooms as well as separation of water layers. As the blooms died and sank they fed bottom layer microorganisms, which used up all available oxygen. Sudden drops in temperature then triggered mixing between the surface and bottom layers, lowering the overall concentration of oxygen in the water beyond the ability to support respiration of the fish. The extreme maximum temperatures, among the hottest on record, are as expected under anthropogenic warming.

3. The conditions leading to this event are an interaction between a severe (but not unprecedented) drought and, more significantly, excess upstream diversion of water for irrigation. Prior releases of water from Menindee Lakes contributed to lack of local reserves.

4. The root cause of the fish kills is that there is not enough water in the Darling system to avoid catastrophic decline of condition through dry periods. This is despite a substantial body of scientific research that points to the need for appropriate flow regimes. Similarly, engagement with local residents, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, has been cursory at best, resulting in insufficient use of their knowledge and engagement around how the system is best managed.

5. The panel strongly supports the objectives of the Water Act 2007 and the framework of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (2012), which were developed with bipartisan political support and intended to increase water for the environment. However, the findings summarized above and detailed in the following sections point to serious deficiencies in governance and management, which collectively have eroded the intent of the Water Act 2007 and implementation of the Murray- Darling Basin Plan (2012) framework.

The freshwater systems of the Darling are already listed as endangered (NSW, 2007) and include multiple fish species listed as threatened by the Commonwealth. Failure to act resolutely and quickly on the fundamental cause—insufficient flows—threatens the viability of the Darling, the fish, and the communities that depend on it for their livelihoods and wellbeing including the traditional owners, who have recognised rights and responsibilities

https://www.science.org.au/supporti...is/reports-and-publications/fish-kills-report
 
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Question.

As the Cubby station is partly owned by a Japanese company, and they are a TPP member, can they sue the Australian govt if we enforce restrictions on Cubby's water allocation that will obviously impact their profits? Cheers.
 
Mike Smyth said:
Question.

As the Cubby station is partly owned by a Japanese company, and they are a TPP member, can they sue the Australian govt if we enforce restrictions on Cubby's water allocation that will obviously impact their profits? Cheers.
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Good question. Did that clause eventually go through as I thought some wanted it out of the TPP.
 
Mike Smyth said:
Question.

As the Cubby station is partly owned by a Japanese company, and they are a TPP member, can they sue the Australian govt if we enforce restrictions on Cubby's water allocation that will obviously impact their profits? Cheers.
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I would say in all probability yes. However Shandong Ruyi is, I think, majority owned by Chinese interests with the Japanese a minor stakeholder. I am happy to be corrected on this as their corporate structure is very tangled and even elusive to research.
Beside that, once a water allocation is given, if any government water authority enforces restrictions it probably then becomes a restriction of trade scenario.
However if they resist a compulsory water buy back, which is what I am led to believe happened, the s**t should hit the fan. So far it hasn't due to certain nefarious government...ummm...shall we say oversights?
Labor lifting the cap on these buy backs, if they actually get in and ENFORCING them, could be game changing.
Interesting times.
 
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Mike Smyth said:
Question.

As the Cubby station is partly owned by a Japanese company, and they are a TPP member, can they sue the Australian govt if we enforce restrictions on Cubby's water allocation that will obviously impact their profits? Cheers.
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Isn't the TPP canned?

ISDS provisions within FTAs are anti-democratic. Scary there is so little public spotlight on what we have signed up to.
 
Mike Smyth said:
Not sure. Our hands would be well and truly tied if it is.
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Seems the clause is still in there:
The TPP-11 still includes rights for foreign investors to bypass national courts and sue governments for millions of dollars in international tribunals if they can argue that a change in domestic law or policy at national, state or local level will ‘harm’ their investment, known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS).

More:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...s-to-global-corporations-20180611-p4zkrq.html
https://www.smh.com.au/business/wor...payers-to-financial-risk-20180302-p4z2kw.html
 
Craven Morehead said:
I would say in all probability yes. However Shandong Ruyi is, I think, majority owned by Chinese interests with the Japanese a minor stakeholder. I am happy to be corrected on this as their corporate structure is very tangled and even elusive to research.
Beside that, once a water allocation is given, if any government water authority enforces restrictions it probably then becomes a restriction of trade scenario.
However if they resist a compulsory water buy back, which is what I am led to believe happened, the s**t should hit the fan. So far it hasn't due to certain nefarious government...ummm...shall we say oversights?
Labor lifting the cap on these buy backs, if they actually get in and ENFORCING them, could be game changing.
Interesting times.
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Thanks for the info.
 
Mike Smyth said:
The CPTPP entered into force on 30 December 2018 for:

  • Australia
  • Canada
  • Japan
  • Mexico
  • New Zealand, and
  • Singapore;

  • and on 14 January 2019 for
  • Vietnam.


https://dfat.gov.au/trade/agreement...-agreement-for-trans-pacific-partnership.aspx
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Trying to work out how insidious the ISDS provisions for this are (DFAT understandably quiet). It seems some signatories at least try to mitigate the risk:
https://www.mfat.govt.nz/assets/CPTPP/CPTPP-Joint-Declaration-ISDS-Final.pdf
 
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