There is no time to waste. The Basin remains in a poor state.
The Murray-Darling Declaration was signed on 5 February 2018 by 12 leading experts on the Basin. The Declaration is about how to fix what is going wrong in the Murray-Darling Basin. It is not about politics or playing the ‘blame game’. The signatories have come together to make the Declaration to highlight their real concerns and to offer solutions.
The Northern Basin Review was a review of water recovery figures legislated under the current version of the Basin Plan. The idea was to undertake further scientific and socio-economic analysis to determine if new evidence justified varying the volume of water being returned to the river system in the Northern Murray-Darling Basin.
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority recommended removing 70 gigalitres (GL) of water from the pool of environmental water. Crucially, their recommendation included the removal of 14GL of water from the catchment that is home to the Gwydir Wetlands (near Moree) and 12GL from the catchment that is home to the Macquarie Marshes (near Warren), both of which are listed under the Ramsar Convention.
World Wetlands Day is celebrated every year on 2 February. This day marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Since 1997, the Ramsar Secretariat has provided outreach materials to help raise public awareness about the importance and value of wetlands. 2018 Materials available to download www.worldwetlandsday.org
The Brewarrina, Bourke, Walgett and Central Darling Shire Councils want the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to release water held in storage at Copeton, near Inverell.
The body recently sold 6.7 gigalitres of water originally purchased for environmental purposes, as part of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, to Gywdir-district irrigators.
It said the $2.878 million return from the sale would be used to improve the Basin’s environment.
The Brewarrina shire’s mayor Phillip O’Connor said the sale ridiculed the $13 billion plan when the Barwon-Darling was running low.
Media Release
14 November 2017
Community group takes legal action to enforce water laws because the Coalition government has not
The Inland Rivers Network is taking legal action to force Peter Harris, a big irrigator in the state’s northwest and a Nationals Party donor, to return more than five billion litres of water he took, allegedly illegally, from the Barwon-Darling River. [1]
“It should not fall to community groups to enforce our water laws, but the Berejiklian’s government’s inaction has left the Inland Rivers Network no option,” said Nature Conservation Council CEO Kate Smolski.
Full Details at the EDO NSW website: IRN v Harris and Another
Read More “Upholding water laws, because the government will not!”
9th AUGUST 2017 – Farmers and conservationists rallied outside NSW Parliament today demanding a full judicial review into the mismanagement of water in the Murray-Darling system and the removal of the water portfolios from the National Party in NSW and nationally.
2nd AUGUST 2017 – .. revelations in today’s Daily Telegraph come after Four Corners last month found big irrigators at the top of the Barwon-Darling river system had syphoned off billions of litres of water illegally.
Inland Rivers Network 