The Bureau of Meteorology has also just released a Special Climate Statement on the exceptional heavy rainfall across southeast Australia

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories.   If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

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Dr Andrew Watkins is Manager of Climate Prediction at the National Climate Centre,  Bureau of Meteorology

“Explaining the high levels of rainfall over South Eastern Australian is not as simple as putting it down to just the effects of a La Nina system. La Nina has been backing off quite rapidly over the last few weeks with the Southern Oscillation Index (one of the indicators the development and intensity of El Niño or La Niña events in the Pacific Ocean) dipping back into neutral territory. However we still have some warm ocean temperatures around Australia which are clearly playing a role in what we are seeing at the moment. Temperatures in the Coral Sea are around half a degree warmer than average and the southern half of Western Australia is also experiencing near record warm sea surface temperatures. The high pressure systems we have seen of late have also tended to be further south than usual which can lead to more rainfall across the south east. The recent trough that extended down from the tropics was influenced by one of these highs, and lingered longer than normal across inland areas. The chaotic nature of weather also means that sheer randomness will always plays a part in how much rain will fall during any event.”

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Dr Rob Roggema is Senior Research Fellow at Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures (SURF), Global Cities Research Institute, RMIT University. He was the inaugural international visiting fellow at the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research Centre (2010-2011)

“We cannot control the amount of rainfall. However, in dealing with the rainfall, and preventing it turning into floods, we could and should do much more. Our cities, villages and landscapes are designed in ways that create and exaggerate floods. By trying to discharge rainwater as quickly as possible we create flash flooding and inundations in areas where we don’t want it to happen.

We should change our urban and landscape design to create spaces where large amounts of water can be temporarily stored. After the rain has gone the water can then be released at a slow pace. These areas can be designed as nature reserves, ‘green’ rivers or public spaces, which are filled up in times of heavy rain and can be emptied after the peak flood risk has passed. This way landscapes can function as a sponge and no longer as a drain. The idea to remove vegetation from riverbeds is contradictory with increasing flood resiliency.”

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Across the world countries are having to face the serious issue of depleting water tables as the ever-increasing thirsts of agriculture and industry compete for every drop. In the US a prime example is of an aquifer that extends all the way from South Dakota to northern Texas, yet it has been lowered by nearly 50 metres. In India an aquifer that took 40,000 years to fill was emptied in just over a century, leaving the remaining water too salty and inaccessible to easily use. The problems are no different for us, we rely on underground reservoirs that have built up over thousands of years but we are draining the water far faster than it is being replaced. Amidst the controversies of the Murray-Darling Basin, coal seam gas and desalination plants, Australia is having to sit up and take notice.

An international panel of experts have come together to discuss just how bad the situation really is, what can be learned from other countries and, most importantly, what can be done.

Join the briefing to ask questions such as:

• How much water is stored and how quickly are we using it up?
• What are the contamination risks and what can we do to protect our water?
• How much does Australia’s agriculture and industry rely on groundwater? How important is it for our own drinking water?
• How do current questions over water (desalination plants, coal seam gas and the Murray Darling basin) fit into the picture and what does the future bring?
• What can we learn from other countries and what do governments need to be doing?

Follow the full presentation here |  Audio only is also available here (higher quality available on request  – 12Mb)

SPEAKERS:

• Prof Robert Glennon is Morris K. Udall Professor of Law & Public Policy at the University of Arizona, USA. He specialises in water use, is the author of Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It and was on the Advisory Board at the Centre for Comparative Water Policies and Laws, University of South Australia, Adelaide in 2011
• Prof Edward Sudicky is a Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Waterloo, Canada and currently holds a Canada Research Chair in the field of quantitative hydrogeology. He received the O.E. Meinzer Award from the Geological Society of America in 1999, the Hydrology Award from the American Geophysical Union in 2002 and the M. King Hubbert Award from the National Ground Water Association in 2007. Professor Sudicky is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America.
• Dr Leonard Konikow works at the United States Geological Survey as a research hydrologist. He has received the M. King Hubbert Science Award from USA National Groundwater Association. He was Chairman of the Hydrogeology Division of the Geological Society of America, has served on the USA National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Groundwater Modeling Assessment and was the Chairman of the American Geophysical Union’s Groundwater Committee.
• Em. Prof Ghislain de Marsily holds the position of Emeritus Professor at Pierre & Marie Curie University (UPMC) in Paris, France. He has served on numerous advisory boards including the Nuclear Waste Program of the European Commission and The Commission of Environmental Management Technology of the US National Academy of Science. He is the author of the concept of ‘Hydrogeological Natural Parks’ which suggests a protective action be taken to prevent the degradation of ground water resources.
• Prof Craig Simmons is Director of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training in South Australia and Professor of Hydrogeology at Flinders University, Adelaide. He is also a member of the National Water Commission’s Groundwater Technical Advisory Committee.

DATE: Mon Jan 23 2012
START TIME: 10.45am AEDT
DURATION:  48 min
VENUE: Sydney CBD (also available online).

For further information, please contact the AusSMC on 08 7120 8666 or email us.

ONLINE BACKGROUND BRIEFING SERIES – Continuing Tuesday December 20 at 10.30am AEDT

As coal seam gas continues to gain attention and generate controversy, the AusSMC is running a series of online background briefings for journalists to help you sift through the hype and understand the facts.

Briefing 2: Water worries - Tune in to the second briefing in the series focusing on the biggest potential problems with coal seam gas extraction and groundwater, and ask questions such as:

• Why is potential water movement such a problem?
  

  Coal seam gas briefing part 1: The Process was held on Fri 16 Dec 2011, the full presentation can be accessed here

• Can coal seam gas extraction deplete water supplies?
• Why is waste water a concern?
• Why should we be worried about salt?
• Can water from coal seams contaminate groundwater or surface water?

SPEAKERS:

• Professor Craig Simmons, Professor of Hydrogeology at Flinders University, SA, and Director of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training
• Associate Professor Willem Vervoort, Hydrology and Catchment Management at the University of Sydney
• Dr Gavin Mudd, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering at Monash University, Victoria

A full transcript is now available. Follow the full presentation by clicking here.

Audio only of the briefing is also available.

BRIEFING DETAILS:

DATE: Tuesday December 20, 2011
START TIME: 10.30am AEDT
DURATION: 56 min
VENUE:  Online

For further information, please contact the AusSMC on 08 7120 8666 or email us.

NB:  The AusSMC generally runs two different types of media briefings:
NEWS BRIEFINGS – Where new research or data will be released as part of the briefing
BACKGROUND BRIEFINGS – Where experts discuss an issue which is in the news or an issue we consider newsworthy, but no new research or data is being released

The draft plan is available online on the Murray-Darling Basin Authority website. The plan is now open for 20 weeks of consultation.

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories.  If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

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New comment:

Dr Caroline Sullivan is Associate Professor of Environmental Economics and Policy at Southern Cross University, NSW. She has worked extensively on international river basins, and is co-author of a recent book on Adaptive Water Management.

“The Proposed Basin Plan for managing the Murray Darling released yesterday represents a significant step forward towards managing Australia’s greatest river. It is fair to say that there is virtually no agreement on what the right level of water restrictions may be, and certainly much disagreement about upstream-downstream allocations, but it seems to be that now at least, there is some agreement about the need for a solid plan for how the water of the MDB should be managed.

Assessing water resources is a complex task. How should return flows from irrigation be counted, what if these are polluted, how should this be counted? How much water is actually used to grow certain crops, and how can greater efficiency be achieved? What will be the knock-on effect on groundwater recharge if irrigation systems become more efficient? These are all examples of the uncertain information we have to use in making decisions about water resources, especially when operating under conditions of economic and political constraints.

If implemented, the proposed basin plan will contribute to the national effort currently under way in Australia to build a complete set of water accounts. Australia is one of the first countries to implement such a comprehensive attempt to regularise water data, and one of the main objectives of this is to improve management effectiveness. This is true also of the need for a basin plan for the Murray-Darling. It has long been said that you cannot manage what you cannot measure, and so for this reason, a comprehensive plan is needed to support more effective water sharing. The interpretation of what is more effective, and where most effective water use occurs, is an open question, and there is little agreement between irrigators, and others in the basin that have a real stake in this plan. The 20 week consultation phase now starting over this proposed plan will provide a real opportunity for issues to be raised and worries to be assuaged. Proponents of the plan claim to be acting in the spirit of adaptive management, and if this is true, there will be much room to manoeuvre during the seven years of this plan’s implementation.

Realistically in today’s world, the state of any river is determined by the people who use it and control it. While the numbers presented in this report may be unlikely to secure the desired environmental goals as things stand at present, but what the proposed plan does do is to put in place an institutional arrangement around which stakeholders can express their views, so that needs can be fairly addressed. The state of our environment is clearly determined by our own actions and decisions, and the future of the Murray Darling Basin is going to be determined by what society wants. If we value short term economic returns more than long term ecological integrity of the river, then our decisions will prioritise the economy over the environment. If we want a more sustainable future, the emphasis must now move from profit-people-planet to planet-people-profit.”

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Dr Jonathan Sobels is a social scientist in catchment management at the School of the Environment, Flinders University

“When the MDBA commissioned me to examine the social impacts on the Lower Murray and Lakes communities of low flows and drought in 2011, I was confronted with irrigation farmers who had completely lost access to fresh (ish) water from 2007 to 2009. They hadn’t been compensated for giving up part of their water licence, they literally could not pump any water from the River or groundwater. Before the crisis they had access to fresh (ish) water because they were at the bottom of a river system over 1500 km long, draining soils which contain substantial remnant salt deposits, and water which had already been used and re-used many times over.

As this extreme social experiment continued, as the water levels receded, people had to adapt by making decisions which had permanent consequences. These decisions were not solely driven by access to water; there were individual contexts that each family, each small business, each town must account for and work within, including demographic forces, bank and financial responsibilities, market prices and mining jobs. The cascade effects, for example, included changed land use, changed business focus, alternative off-farm or ‘off-business’ jobs, vacant houses, closed schools, emergence of action groups and increased mental health problems. And yet, within these effects, adaptive decisions that people made enabled many of them to survive and prosper.

What hurt people more than loss of water was the way in which state politicians caused ‘political low flows’; the greatest fear of people of the Lower Lakes is that another drought will occur, and they will be back in the same position again. The time line is too long for full implementation; again it is a political timeline based on Victoria’s contracts with its irrigators. One can hope for but not expect better governance from the MDBA. However, based on the Lower Murray irrigators experience, I do not foresee widespread dislocation of communities from water, just modifications to business models.  At its most simplistic, if the Murray Mouth is kept open 90% of the time by flows coming over Lock 1, salt will be removed from the system and allocations can be built from the bottom up. After all, the river has earned the right to be healthy: What can we do to ensure it stays that way for our mutual benefit?”

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Professor Jennifer McKay is with the School of Commerce at the University of South Australia

What do you think of the process so far?

“Forming the Murray Darling Plan is a highly politicised process, as we all know. We’ve had a number of iterations and arguments about the amount of water that needs to be returned to the environment to protect it. It’s a brave experiment for Australia in many ways; most nations are not being this explicit. It is upsetting many pre-conceived and pre-existing values and attitudes to water, the amount that can be used and perceptions of what the environment needs.

The consultation process has attempted to incorporate individual people’s wishes rather than reach some type of consensus and therefore we’re getting very polarised views and negative attitudes to the changes. Some of the terms in both the act and the plan, such as ‘best available science’ and ‘conjunctive use’, could have merited a broader definition so that it created a bit more certainty around what’s actually been happening and what decision processes are underway.

The impact on communities of these reductions is still an area where there needed to be perhaps more data presented. If the authority did have that data, then it would have been advisable for that to be a bit more publically available than it was, because we’re getting a very low-level stakeholder argument now.”

What are the implications of the draft plan for groundwater?

“I think groundwater has been a bit undervalued and has not been accounted for in a precautionary sense. People will be inclined to substitute their loss of surface water with groundwater now and that’s going to cause further overdraw. That’ll be regional, that’ll be very idiosyncratic. It’s not a general thing. I think groundwater, and the whole conjunctive need to manage groundwater and surface water together, has possibly been a bit lost. If groundwater is seen as ‘this is the way to substitute for our loss of surface water’, then we’ll of course end up with a very bad result for the groundwater ecosystems and the communities that rely on them, so I think groundwater hasn’t been given enough elevation.”

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Prof Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, NSW

“The plan includes a reduction in water use of 2,750 GL per year (compared to 2009 baseline diversions). So there is an extra 2,750 GL per year in environmental flows. Does this give the right balance? The candidates for the biggest loser are (1) the irrigators, (2) the Basin communities and (3) the environment.

The extra environmental flow is estimated to lead to a reduction in irrigated agricultural production of about 11%. But the irrigators won’t be the big losers because they will be compensated by the water buyback scheme.

Also it’s important to remember that the past over-allocation of water has meant that water has been devoted at the margin to inefficient uses. The cut-back to a normal allocation will cut out these inefficient uses, at small cost in output.

An extra 2,750GL in environmental flows is estimated to lead to a reduction of about 1% in gross regional product across the Basin. The big losers could be businesses and smaller communities that are highly dependent on irrigated agriculture, but unable to capture the benefits of water buyback. The most severely affected of this type of irrigation-dependent businesses are likely to be in locations where the climate will not allow adequate substitution of dryland agriculture to substantially replace irrigated output.

However, even here the structural adjustment programs within the scheme provide substantial benefits for affected communities. It is likely that for the most part, Basin communities will not be the biggest loser.

So the answer to the biggest loser question is: Probably not enough is being provided for the environment. It would seem to be the biggest loser. The science is uncertain, but it does suggest that a minimum of 4,000GL would be required to get us to the threshold required to achieve minimum environmental benefits. Certainly, the extra 2,750GL in environmental flows will need to be managed judiciously in key locations to garner the best return to the environment (and the least cost to the community).

It is this management aspect that is the critical part of the plan. It promises two important things. First, it suggests, at one level, that management will be devolved to communities. Second, it suggests that the Basin will in future be managed as a whole and not constrained, as in the past, by State boundaries. To achieve both of these will be an enormous step forward and, if achieved, will form the basis of a sustainable health river system.”

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Prof John Quiggin is Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland and currently Hinkley Professor at John Hopkins University, Baltimore, US

“The process set in train by the Water Act of 2007 has failed in the most important respects. Instead of an evidence-based policy, we have a political compromise which will yield inadequate flows in the river system, whilst wasting billions on low-value infrastructure projects. Nevertheless, while the target of 2,750 GL is disappointing, it is important to remember that, less than a decade ago, the members of COAG could not even agree on a saving of 500 GL.”

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Dr Jamie Pittock is a water researcher from the Crawford School of Economics and Government at Australian National University who specialises in governance of water for conservation of freshwater ecosystems and in climate change adaptation

Does the announcement represent the science?

“No. Action is needed now to restore the extensive areas of degraded freshwater ecosystems, whereas the government’s intention to implement this plan in 2019-2024 is likely to be too late.  The amount of water to be reallocated is insufficient (2,750 GL) to sustain significant areas of freshwater ecosystems – the Government’s own Guide suggested in 2010 that as much as 7,600 GL need to be reallocated. The draft Plan makes inadequate allowances for the loss of water expected with climate change.”

How does it differ from the draft proposals from last year?

“This draft Plan is worse for the environment than the Guide in a number of respects. Rivers need water to be healthy and this Plan would allocate less water than was proposed in the Guide (2,750GL compared to 3-4,000 GL). Even this reduced amount is proposed to be reviewed in five years’ time. The Authority proposes to rely more on “environmental works and measures” – small scale engineering works to spread smaller volumes of environmental water further. This is more risky for the environment in a number of respects: a) it relies more on good day to day management to work; b) there is less room for error with less water when state government water managers have demonstrated a lot of errors; c) it fragments the riverine environment with levees, channels and weirs and so blocks fish passage and dries out some wetland areas, and d) risks exacerbating changes to soil and water quality, for instance, by increasing salinity levels isolated floodplain wetlands.”

Will the proposals improve the environmental outlook for the basin – if not then why not?

“Not much. Returning more water to the freshwater environment will always help to a greater or lesser extent, but the draft Plan is a case of too little (2,750 GL) and too late (2019-2024).”

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Feel free to use these quotes in your stories.  Any further comments will be posted on our website at www.aussmc.org. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

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Caroline Sullivan is Associate Professsor of Environmental Economics and Policy at Southern Cross University, Director of Research in the SCU School of Environmental Science and Management, and a Fellow of the ANU Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy.

“The situation in the Murray Darling Basin is one which is certainly not unique. In river basins over the world, communities and governments are facing increasing pressure over water and how it should be shared and used. The science of Integrated Water Resources Management, (IWRM) is now becoming mainstream, but in the early days, the MDB was often held up globally, as a good example to others on how to manage a large river basin. At that time, the MDB was highly praised for having gone through the processes of institutional restructuring, so that its management could be seen holistically, treating the river as it should be, in terms of its actual geographical reality (eg as a big river connected along its length and influenced by meteorological and hydrological conditions).

While institutional refinement will be required to implement the complexities of the revised basin plan, it will be important for a positive outcome in the management of this river, that we consider three basic things:
- the views and needs of all the stakeholders,
- the need for the maintenance of the environmental integrity of our life support system (the earth, we are part of it), and
- the need for efficiency, effectiveness and equity in the use of our scarce and valuable natural resources.

The rest is all just politics!”

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Professor John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. He has worked on the problems of the Murray Darling Basin since the early 1980s.

“The situation regarding the Murray Darling Basin has gone from bad to worse to pretty much hopeless. We had everything needed for a plan that made just about everyone better off: more water for the environment, a good deal for farmers who wanted to switch out of irrigation, no compulsory acquisition, and enough spare money sloshing into country towns to more than offset any reduction in agricultural output. Instead, the process was spectacularly mishandled, most notably by the Murray Darling Basin Authority, who managed to scare everyone into thinking the government was about to confiscate their water. That handed power back to the most reactionary irrigator lobby groups who just want to stay on the old, unsustainable path as long as possible, while extracting as much money as they can from the public purse. The release yesterday of the Windsor Report suggests that they will get their wish. The central point of the report is that the government should abandon all “non-strategic” purchases of water, while pouring even more money into so-called “water-saving” schemes, which will cost $5-10 billion while delivering little if any additional water.”

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