The Community Meeting in Adelaide was a great success. Over 600 people gathered in the Adelaide Town Hall on a Tuesday night to hear from political leaders, scientists, the Ngarrindjeri and environmentalists. South Australia’s voice was clearly heard as the state called for a Basin Plan that secures the health of the environment and the future of South Australia.

Over the coming week there will be video and audio available from the event, but right now you can see what happened online here using Storify.

Read the questions from the meeting

Questions from the Community Meeting

At the Community Meeting in Adelaide on April 10, the audience were invited to submit questions to the speakers. Unfortunately not all the questions were able to be answered on the night, but all were presented to the Minister for the Environment Tony Burke at the end of the meeting. These are the questions that were asked on the night.

Download questions

” In our view the Proposed Basin Plan (draft Plan) does not comply with the Act in a number of respects. In addition, it is clear from the draft Plan and the associated explanatory materials that the approach the MDBA has taken in the development and drafting of the Basin Plan has been to consistently give provisions their weakest interpretation and/or give effect to them in the weakest way.”

The full legal analysis can be accessed on the EDO website.

But, a draft version of this Plan which is now out for public review fails the key tests for a healthy river. Download this information sheet and have your say.

Rivers die from the mouth up. South Australia is likely to be hit the hardest if the Murray-Darling Basin Plan fails to restore the necessary water flows near the mouth of the river.

The final Murray-Darling Basin Plan which is likely to be presented in Federal Parliament later this year should meet the key environmental tests for a healthy river.

Here are a few things you can do right now:

1. The draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan is now open for public review. Write a submission to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and tell them that the draft fails the key tests for a healthy river.
2. Speak to your local MPs about the draft Plan. Download and share this information sheet for some tips about what to tell them.

For those living in Adelaide, keep watching this space for information about a Murray Public meeting in April.

John Pettigrew, irrigator and spokesperson for the Environmental Farmers Network, writes: The highly anticipated draft basin plan quite simply misses the mark. The 2750 gigalitres Sustainable Diversion Limit (SDL) included in the draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan appears to an arbitrary figure, a compromise as a result of pressure from vested interests to give socio-economic factors greater weighting than environmental factors in the draft Basin Plan. What this compromise fails to acknowledge is that there are no jobs — and no future — on a dead river.

Unfortunately the process used by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to achieve this arbitrary figure lacks the transparency needed for the community to clearly understand what constitutes the minimum science-based SDL required to protect and restore of the river system, and to what extent this figure has been discounted by social, economic and flow constraint considerations in the plan’s development.

Without this basic information and ability to track and judge the weighting given to these competing influences, informed community input has been made impossible.

For ongoing health, the Murray-Darling Basin needs at least the return of these minor floods to maintain fertility and provide the ecosystem services communities in the basin rely on.

Irrigator and Environmental Farmer's Network spokesperson John Pettigrew lives near Shepparton, VIC

This volume of 2750GL for the environment is clearly not supported by the best current scientific knowledge, is unlikely to comply with the Water Act 2007 and brings into question the responsible expenditure of taxpayer funds.

After 20 years of water reform and 12 months of good rainfall, irrigators have never been better placed to deal with the adjustments necessary to restore the Murray-Darling to health.

Read the full article on the Crikey website.

CSIRO Headquarters Author:Bidgee Source:Wikipedia License: CC BY-SA 3.0

In May this year the Murray-Darling Basin Authority asked CSIRO to review the methodology used in developing the draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan. An interim assessment was provided in September, and the full findings of the review panel have finally been released along with the draft Basin Plan documents on November 28.

The failure of the proposed 2750 billion litres of additional water reviving the Murray-Darling has been proven not once, but twice through the process of the review because:

• of its glaring findings, and
• the review panel’s terms of reference set out by the MDB Authority had glaring omissions; they were not asked to answer all the right questions.

The review panel has found five main flaws in the modelling used to develop the draft Basin Plan which was released yesterday morning. The most important finding – one which organisations and individuals who take a strong interest in reviving the Basin have been crying hoarse about ever since the figures were made known – is that 2750 billion litres of water will not meet key environmental requirements.

The other significant flaws identified by the review panel include:

• Climate change has not been accounted for in the modelling, with environmental water most likely to be compromised as a result
• Limited use of ecological models and expert opinion
• Identifying a handful of “key” sites in the basin and

The review panel made it very clear that higher volumes needed to be modelled by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. The Water Act 2007 which was passed by Federal Parliament and started the process of the development of a national plan for the Murray-Darling by an independent Basin Authority requires that ‘what the river needs’ is first identified and modelled in the plan. The draft Basin Plan fails this requirement by a very wide margin.

The second failure is related to the scope of the work the science panel was asked to undertake by the Authority. The terms of reference for the review panel asked a few good questions, but had significant omissions.

For example, instead of asking “Does the proposed plan apply a valid method for identifying key environmental assets and functions and determining their environmental flow requirments? the MDBA asked the panel “Has the best available scientific information (climate, hydrology and ecology) been used” and “Have the best available hydrologic and environmental models been used”.

The key findings of the review panel underline the limitations and omissions of the original terms of reference provided by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

What next?

If the overwhelming findings of a review panel who were not asked all the right questions to start with is that the environment needs much more than 2750 billion litres of water, what would a scientific review panel who are asked to answer all the right questions find?

This is a now or never time for the Murray-Darling; there is now an opportunity to pass the plan through Federal Parliament. But Federal Parliament needs to be able to vote for the plan on the basis of its adequacy for the environment. With close to $10 billion of Australian taxpayer’s money being set aside to help communities adjust, no one wants to have to live with a bad plan which provides no certainty for communities and condemns the rivers to a slow death. Australians also do not want to go through the next drought without fixing the problem. The only thing left to be done, and the outcome we all want, is a plan which flushes out salt, keeps the water clean, and supports communities in the long-term.

With the “independent” Murray-Darling Basin Authority having blown its credibility in addressing what the environment needs, the ball is in Federal Minister Burke’s court. To give himself and Federal Parliament the right evidence to support a Basin Plan next year, he should institute an independent scientific panel which asks all the relevant questions.

We now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to restore Australia’s lifeblood the Murray-Darling to health. The draft version of a national plan for our rivers – the Murray-Darling Basin Plan – has been released for public review over a twenty weeks period. The plan will be finalised in 2012 after which legislation is likely to be presented to Federal Parliament.

We have a shared interest in protecting and restoring the Murray-Darling – it is the nation’s lifeblood. The best protection for farming, regional and metropolitan communities is to keep the Basin’s lifeblood flowing.

Unfortunately, the proposed volumes of additional water in the draft plan are not likely to go very far in achieving the environmental outcomes necessary for protecting and restoring the Murray-Darling to health. Which is why during the following months, we need to make our voices heard as widely as possible. We need to make sure that the final Murray-Darling Basin Plan which will be put in front of the Australian Parliament for a vote in 2012 returns enough water to make our rivers healthy.

Keep visiting this site for the latest information about the draft Basin Plan and to hear the perspectives of groups and individuals from the bush as well as the city who care about our rivers and want to see them restored to health. Get your friends and community involved by sharing the website on social media.

What does a farmer from Balranald, a conservation group and a fisher from the south east corner of South Australia have in common: the shared understanding that our rivers are our lifeblood and it is in our national interest to protect Australia’s lifeblood the Murray-Darling River.

On Monday the rubber hits the road. The draft version of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan will be released and will be followed by a 20-week public consultation period.  The plan will then be finalised and sent to Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke. Minister Burke must only agree on a plan which guarantees to return the Murray-Darling to health and is based on credible science before introducing it to Federal Parliament for a vote.

We have some information about what will be in the draft Basin Plan. To begin with, we do not think that the 2750 billion litres of additional environmental water being proposed to be returned through the draft Plan will deliver what our rivers need.  Multiple lines of scientific evidence show us that a minimum of 4000 billion litres of additional water is required for this. We are waiting for more information to make an informed assessment of what environmental outcomes the proposed volumes might fail to deliver.

Over the next five to six months, the range of voices from the national alliance Voices for the Murray-Darling will be working together throughout the Basin as well as in metropolitan areas to make the Basin Plan good.