30th November 2011
The Editor
Dear Sir/Madam
I am a very concerned Australian living on the mighty Murray River in the Murray Darling Basin. Both sides of my family settled in the Cobram district some 150 years ago.
I became very concerned about the now released Murray Darling Basin Plan some months ago and decided over a month ago to create another voice and have one site where everybody can get updates on the plan whenever they want to, to this end I created a Facebook page “Save Murray Darling Basin communities” and I keep it updated with articles and opinions from a wide variety of sources. To date I have connected with a number of people and communities in the basin along with a large number of politicians and media outlets.
I believe that the 970 gigalitres per year of “new water” indicated in the plan can be achieved by infrastructure and environmental spending, what we need is time, money and determination.
Some 214 gigalitres per year have been achieved by the northern Victorian NVIRP project, so it is quite rational to assume that the 970 gigalitres per year can be achieved by the way I suggest. The channel system has been leaking for 40 years at least. Successive Federal and State governments have been more than happy to take farmers money for water since the inception of irrigation along with spending the absolute bare necessities on infrastructure.
I refute Minister Tony Burke’s statement that the Murray River mouth be open 9 years out of 10.
Before the dams were built and irrigation commenced there are many stories of severe droughts and the rivers being reduced to puddles, I have never seen the Murray River reduced to puddles in my 52 years.
The recent severe decade long drought and water buy backs have already turned large numbers of irrigation farms idle and very adversely affected a lot of basin communities.
Surely with a huge dose of common sense and negotiation we can negotiate a sensible outcome for affected farmers and communities.
Yours Faithfully,
Peter Gilmour
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