Saturday Extra

There's been more bad news on the state of the once mighty Murray-Darling.

Last week the Murray-Darling Basin Commission announced that last month's inflows were the lowest on record for the month of June.

The federal government says it will spend billions on new projects, but unless the big dry breaks, is there much that can really be done to enliven the Murray-Darling?

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

James Carleton: Now we are going to look at water, and there is more bad news on the state of the once-mighty Murray-Darling, a river system that in some places now is little more than a creek.

Last week the Murray-Darling Basin Commission revealed that last month's inflows were the lowest on record, (that's for the month of June) and there are predictions that the Murray-Darling River system will be dry by the end of the century.

The federal government has announced billions of dollars for new projects, but unless there are large downfalls of rain, is there much that can really be done to help the Murray-Darling?

Asa Wahlquist is not optimistic. She's the seasoned rural reporter who has reported exhaustively on the developing crisis and she believes we are very fast approaching a new tipping point. Asa writes for The Australian; she's also the author of Thirsty Country: Options for Australia. I spoke with her a short while ago and asked her whether she sees the June inflow figures as particularly troubling.

Asa Wahlquist: The Murray system is basically a winter rainfall system. What they found is that research has shown that over the last ten years or so the autumn rainfall in the southern Murray area has actually decreased. This is really significant for two reasons: one is it's really significant for graingrowers who rely on the autumn break to plant their crops, but it also means that if there's a good autumn rainfall, it wets up the catchment, so that when the winter rain does come, you get a lot of run-off. So what is very scary is when autumn has been very dry—and May was particularly dry this year—and then June is also very dry. One of the problems within the Murray-Darling Basin is that less than 10% of the rain that falls on the Basin ends up in the river. The figures for North America is 52%, half the rain that falls in America ends up in their rivers. We're looking here at less than 10%. This means it's extremely vulnerable to climate change, to any increase in temperature. There's been studies by the CSIRO that show that for every one-degree rise in temperature, you have something like nearly 1,700 gigalitres extra evaporating off, not going into the river.

So although there are arguments about the degree to which the current rain is due to climate change, (and rainfall is very difficult to link to climate change because rainfall is inherently really variable), the last three years in the Murray-Darling Basin were the hottest on record, the last was 1.1 degrees above the long-term average. So you are seeing a reduction in inflows into the system, so that even when they do get average rainfall, they are getting less than average inflow. And the inflow over the last six years has been considerably lower than the long-term average. Is this where we're going in the future? I don't know, but you would be wise to start planning on this basis.

James Carleton: And what form should that planning take, mindful of the fact that things could be as dire as you suggest?

Asa Wahlquist: Well basically the amount of water that's been flowing into the Murray on average over the last six years is basically equivalent to the amount of water that's licensed for use. You can't run a river like that. You can't run a river taking out so much water.

James Carleton: Everything that goes in, comes out.

Asa Wahlquist: Well that's why it hasn't been coming out, because you can't possibly do that. But basically those two things are equivalent. I don't know what the figure is of a good volume to be taken out, but the CSIRO has just finished its sustainable yield survey, and what they've done in that is—and this came out of the Prime Minister's Melbourne Cup Day Summit in November 2006 when they realised the Murray-Darling Basin was in crisis. What they didn't have was the figures they needed to actually plan on. It's the biggest project the CSIRO has ever done. They've looked at every basin in the Murray, they've looked at how much water is actually available in the river system, they've looked at how much water is being taken out, they've looked at what the likelihood is under climate change. And what they found—and that is on the average for the Murray-Darling Basin as a whole—something like 56% of the water that flows in the rivers is being taken out for irrigation and for towns. This is too much, 56%. You're not leaving much in there for the river, so it's no surprise that there's been scarcely any water flowing in to the lower lakes for the last four or five years.

James Carleton: Is it time to socially and economically plan for the affected communities? We're talking so much about the environmental plan, and the environmental management, perhaps it's time to consider this in the human cost as well in the long term.

Asa Wahlquist: And there are studies being done into that; people understand, governments understand, that there is a very deep responsibility to these communities that have been set up—basically because governments set them up and encouraged them in the first place. So there are a lot of studies being done into the social impact of these changes. There's also of course the federal government's Agriculture Department's studies into drought and there are socioeconomic studies associated with that.

James Carleton: The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, says $3.7 billion will be made available for engineering and irrigation projects; is that promising to some extent?

Asa Wahlquist: It is, but there's just simply not the water in the system to be saved. All those projects will save water when there's water in the system, and they will save water some years down the track. Generally speaking, these things do take some time. The problem is, there just isn't water in the system at the moment. There's not even really enough water in the system at the moment for the core demands of towns and cities. If you look at the last analysis by the Murray-Darling Basin put out last week, they only have a portion of what they actually need to supply the towns along the rivers, they are relying on rainfall, and that expectation is based on the lowest-ever rainfall, and what they call contingency measures, which are things like drying out yet more wetlands.

James Carleton: We have the new Murray-Darling Authority to be up and running by 2011, again that's something I gather that you would have wished perhaps we'd had a generation ago, but now that it is here, is that some cause for hope?

Asa Wahlquist: It is. But the problem with the Murray-Darling Basin, we have known about these problems for a very long time. If we go back to 1994, several changes were made then. They did a study of the water available in the Basin, they realised that if they kept extracting water for irrigation at the rate at which they were doing, they would push the system over the edge. So the Murray-Darling Basin decided to put a cap on water based on 1994 levels. But because the Murray-Darling Basin Commission doesn't actually have any authority, Queensland for example said 'No, we're not putting on a cap, we haven't developed our irrigation as much as the rest of you; we're going to go ahead and develop our irrigation.' And the Condamine-Balonne River went from one of the least developed, to one of the most over-developed, after the decision to actually cap water use.

New South Wales, for example, has breached the cap frequently along the Darling River and, again, because this Commission has no teeth, it just goes ahead and does it. The difference will be the Authority will actually be able to set caps based on what is now very good scientific information—because there also was not a solid base of science to make these decisions on, and it will be able to enforce that cap.

James Carleton: You mentioned the federal government, you also had some criticisms levelled at the Queensland and New South Wales governments; what about Mr Brumby's Victorian government?

Asa Wahlquist: His insistence that there be a 4% limit on how much water can be traded out of each irrigation area severely limits the options for the government wanting to buy back water for the environment. That limit was put in place—initially it was 2%—it was put in place to protect the community so that there's not a huge social change. Clearly there are communities which are really facing huge viability problems under the current environment. Last year in several of the irrigation districts of Victoria they hit that limit within three months. This year, financially I'm talking about, this month, July, the first month of the year I understand there'll be a couple of irrigation districts that will hit it this month. So how is that in the interests of irrigators in those valleys who want to sell their water, they won't be able to sell their water out of the valley, meaning to out of the irrigation area—and then to something like the environment—for another 11 months. It's really put a huge stop on the trade that is supposed to actually help save the Basin.

James Carleton: What would all governments, state and federal, be doing to meet the standard which you would have them meet?

Asa Wahlquist: The difficulty is we're really at the one minute to midnight scenario. The difficulty is, we have known about all these problems for a long time. There has been, on paper, for a long time now, a commitment to manage the Basin for the environment as well as for users. And time after time, decisions, the actual actions, have fallen far short of that. We really are in a situation where there's really no room to move.

James Carleton: Many people in the east coast cities with no exposure to the economics of the Basin and the communities and so forth will look at this in strictly environmental terms, 'How could irrigators have done this?' 'How could politicians have let them do it?' And people in the Basin will be thinking, 'Hang on, 90% of us have committed only the crime of working hard, but perhaps the remaining 10% of us have really developed the region with the encouragement of the authorities, and the people in the city have enjoyed literally the fruits of that work; is there no common ground between the two? Is that human misunderstanding having a negative impact on the Basin itself?

Asa Wahlquist: It's really very difficult. I really don't quite understand why this is the case but, generally speaking, irrigators do not enjoy a good reputation in the city. And it's really misinformation. City people don't actually understand where their food comes from. You only have to grow a lettuce or a tomato to realise how much water our food needs. It needs a lot of water. Basically every calorie of food needs about 1 litre of water. So if you're eating between 2,000 and 3,000 calories a day, you are responsible for the use of between 2,000 and 3,000 litres of water. That's if you're sticking to a vegetarian diet. If it's meat, it could be up around 10,000 litres. We all need a lot of water to survive. And I just think there's been a real breakdown in communication and an understanding of what's actually involved in producing our food and fibre. You talk to irrigators, they are all extremely concerned abut the environments. They are the ones who are suffering. The way the water allocation works is along the Murray-Darling Basin, the first people to lose their water, it's not towns, it's always the irrigators.

James Carleton: And yet in the cities, we can find people wasting water in a way which people in the country may find slothful in the extreme, and yet they still bear the brunt of criticism, perhaps misunderstanding, about the role of irrigation.

Asa Wahlquist: Yes, it always surprises me. In Australia we have more people concentrated in the cities than just about any other country in the world, so we do have a lack of understanding in the city, of how food is actually grown. And even what the area looks like in the geography of the area, how highly variable flows are in the Murray and the Darling, and how difficult life can be out there.

James Carleton: And we have this sort of perfect storm, don't we; of long-term mismanagement, climate change, and lower water inflows naturally, which has brought us to this current situation. What do communities in the Basin need to prepare themselves for, to steel themselves for, looking ahead to the medium and long term?

Asa Wahlquist: That's very hard to say, but clearly the outlook is not very good for a number of those communities. One of the difficulties we face is that irrigation in Australia was set up not as an economic proposition, but as a social endeavour. They were set up to green the inland, to populate the inland, and that sort of thing, rather than actually looking at how much can this land produce, and how economic is that. So we have a lot of irrigation systems that are set up on very old values, and are really very, very inefficient at the moment, and people are having to face all of this. One of the things that irrigators do have going for them is the fact that with a water market, the value of water has gone up and for most people, the value of their water way exceeds the value of their land. Basically if you have two plots of land next to each other and one is irrigated and one is not, the irrigator property is earning 13 times more than the dry land property. So the other problem of course is if you do sell away your water rights, if you're able to do that, you have land then that's not worth a great deal. So there's a lot of soul searching going on about how people can make the best use of the water licences they have and of the land.

But I think we're going to see—the other problem of course with irrigation is because irrigation was seen to be reliable, there's a whole infrastructure set up around it. So while most dry land things like wheat goes on to the ship as wheat grains, most irrigated produce like milk and grapes and citrus and rice and things like that are actually processed in the local towns, so they also generate a huge amount of income for the local regions. And if you lose the primary product, like if you lose the rice, you are then losing mills and a really big local workforce, and basically the infrastructure of an entire community.

James Carleton: Maybe we could finish on an optimistic note, to the extent that we can: when we get this new Murray-Darling Authority up and running by 2011, how do you hope to see things changing on the ground?

Asa Wahlquist: Well first of all, even though the authority—sorry to say this, James—even though the authority will be up by 2011, water plans that the states have in place will live out their natural lifetime, so it'll be out a bit further than that. But what you will have in place is a body that has terrific scientific understanding on the Basin, of its water, the water use and the water flows. You have a community that now really understands the importance of environmental flows. This is something that some sections of the Basin have grappled with. We all now understand this, that we cannot let the lower lakes die, that there are wetlands and trees along the river that are dying, and we cannot allow this to happen. So I think we've seen a really big cultural shift. We also have a much better understanding of irrigation, we know where water's being lost and where irrigation is being done well. We know how to do irrigation well. In Australia, we know how to do irrigation really well. And if we apply that understanding to the areas where it is most appropriate, we are in a position to see a very different sort of Basin, one that is making best use of the water that is available for top-notch irrigation, but one that also really values and cherishes and protects its environment.

James Carleton: Asa Wahlquist, rural writer for The Australian, and author of Thirsty Country, published by Allen & Unwin. Thank you for your time.

Asa Wahlquist: Thanks, James.

Guests

Asa Wahlquist
Rural Writer The Australian

Publications

Title: Thirsty Country: Options for Australia
Author: Asa Wahlquist
Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Story Researcher and Producer

Julie Browning

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