ABC 27//7/2017 Water is the single most important natural resource for communities, who rely on the Darling River for their livelihood and water rights have been traded up and down the river with operators with deep pockets to purchase water from small irrigators and that is the problem big business holding communities downstream at ransom.
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The Barwon Darling Rivers, while watching ABC 4 Corners on the state of the river, and what you see on the river is the first two pumps drawing water from the river into private holding dams, millions of litres of water to grow cotton.
As one travels down the river there are 11 pumps, pumping water of of the river into private holding dams and on one cotton farm they have five dams and the farm dams are of enormous proportions and it was reported that the meters were not metering the water. Who has the responsibility for reading the meters?
It was also reported that two cotton companies own 70 per cent of the water and one company owns 30 billion litres of water, valued at $300 million and in good years they produce cotton and when in drought they sell their water to desperate farmers and make "more money than growing cotton."
How can a company own so much water out of the river and what about the environment and the people who rely on the river for domestic water and the stations that run their head of cattle and sheep? Australians, they need a fair go when it comes to water. Governments have failed the people and tax payers in regards to the Murray Darling Basin Plan.
In 2016 Griffith City Council made a submission to government in regards to water storage for NSW and recommended the Scheme for Diversion of the Clarence River Tributaries west to the Dumaresq River to the Murray-Darling Basin.
To divert river flows westward from high rainfall catchments in the northern rivers area of NSW and Queensland and "governments fail to listen."
Fran Pietroboni
Griffith
Fair shake
I always thought that Australia was the land of a fair go.
When I see the shop rents and indeed houses to rent in Griffith I imagine the landlords still want to be the richest men in the cemetery.
Don't you see that you can't take it with you, the money I mean.
In the bible it says that a rich man has as much chance to get to heaven as trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle.
Gordon the barber
Griffith
Take a bow you cheaters
I hope Australia’s cricket team is proud of itself. What a shameful day in our sporting history. How sad that upon being caught they seemed to be the only ones with no real understanding of the seriousness of what they had done.
Paul Evans
Wodonga
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