Time to amend charter
Early water allocations are paramount to save valuable dying crops, stock and supply other drought stricken farming areas. We have a current water crisis situation, but solutions are possible if we think outside the box. We need to challenge water charter for future drought and flow management.
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Our farming community can provide food and fodder for other communities in this present longstanding drought if they are given access to water. We cannot make it rain but we can utilise existing water. Six gates are open at Murray mouth in SA, allowing wastage of fresh water to the ocean (28/8 MIL Talking Water). What is the rationale behind this wastage?
Farmers use water productively, unlike those who manage environmental water and send it wastefully out to sea. If human basic needs are food, water and shelter (clothing included), why is it so challenging in the present water crisis for water managers to restrict irrigators access to existing water? Providing water will enable them to finish off their winter crops and grow fodder to maintain all stock including dairy. Their crops will die within weeks – if they have not already done so.
It should be noted that dams in the Murray catchment were constructed originally to store water for the purpose of drought-proofing farms and flood mitigation in the NSW Murray Valley. Food for human consumption, stock fodder (potential losses) and fibre (cotton and wool) are basic needs and without this productivity community businesses are unable to flourish.
The flow-on effects are job losses, such as retail, machinery sales, trades, plus a decrease in the likes of student numbers, health workers and facilities along with a decline in population. Farmers are land carers and therefore the health of the environment is critical to them also, so don’t they have a right to some environmental water in a drought crisis?
Our future endeavours should be to focus on an amendment to the Water Charter enabling parliament to better protect against future drought and flood crises.
Belinda Whittakers, Jenny Kooloos
Murray Valley
Stupidity is shocking
I sometimes wonder how humans got to be top of the food chain and the brightest thing in the universe when we are generally so stupid.
How was it there was nobody bright enough to realise that plastics had the capacity to bury us in rubbish, if we made enough of them?
We insist on driving our own car with only one person aboard rather than forming car pools, and so clogging the roads, and wasting a non-renewable resource.
The latest seems to be battery-powered cars, initially to be powered by electricity-generated by coal-fired power stations, as solar-powered turbines might kill a yellow-breasted parrot, or the whoosh of the blades may annoy someone living a mile away.
The other novel idea we are likely to embrace with open arms, is "autonomous" cars, with no driver.
How we may add all those extra cars running about empty, to pick up a passenger, for a short trip on already clogged roads, I cannot visualise.