Govt can buy water and properties in the Darling Basin
Date: 8-Aug-2008
The Inland Rivers Network and the Australian Conservation Foundation have identified six properties with big water storages in the Darling Basin that could be purchased by Federal or state governments to help revive the struggling Murray-Darling system.
Several of these properties are already on the market. Combined they would provide at least 300 gigalitres to address the immediate crisis in the Lower Lakes and the Coorong.
“The Federal, NSW and Queensland governments should buy these properties in the Darling to recover water now to help save the Murray-Darling,” said Inland Rivers Network coordinator Amy Hankinson.
“There is water available in the Darling Basin and it’s for sale,” she said.
ACF and IRN have delivered a paper to the relevant governments outlining the amount of water available on each of the six properties.
The paper says a targeted water purchase approach can be used immediately to help avert the ecological crisis unfolding in the Ramsar-listed Lower Lakes and Coorong.
“There is actually a lot of water in the northern basin and the Government has a golden opportunity to buy that water from willing sellers and transfer it through the system, so that it can inject some life back into the Lower Lakes and the Coorong,” said ACF healthy rivers campaigner Dr Arlene Buchan.
“Buying these properties would be a win-win-win – for the environment, for the communities in the Basin and for willing sellers.
“We must not consign the Lower Lakes and the Coorong – an internationally significant wetland – to the graveyard,” Dr Buchan said.