Murray Darling incidents continue

[Valkie]

what part of

"Droughts and flooding rains" don't these people get?

[Black Orchid]

Murray-Darling basin royal commission report finds gross maladministration. South Australian report also finds negligence and unlawful actions in drawing up multibillion-dollar deal to save river system.

The head of the royal commission into the Murray-Darling basin plan has recommended a complete overhaul of the scheme, including reallocating more water from irrigation to the environment.

Releasing its report on Thursday, the South Australian Murray-Darling basin royal commission found the original plan ignored potentially “catastrophic” risks of climate change.

Bret Walker SC’s report also found commonwealth officials had committed gross maladministration, negligence and unlawful actions in drawing up the multibillion-dollar deal to save Australia’s largest river system.

The investigation into the plan, prompted by allegations of water theft by New South Wales cotton farmers which first aired on the ABC in 2017, recommended major reform, including resetting water-saving limits, repealing the outcome of the northern basin review, dumping major projects, like the Menindee Lakes project, proposed by NSW, and new measurements for water on floodplains.

The report comes as drought grips the Murray-Darling basin. Rivers have stopped flowing in north-west NSW, leaving some towns on severe water restrictions.

Several major fish kills in NSW, including two of unprecedented scale at Menindee on the lower Darling, have resulted in hundreds of thousands of fish dying, leading to renewed questions about management of the river system by authorities. The lakes were drained twice in 2016 and 2017 as the drought hit.

The 746-page report contained 111 findings and 44 recommendations.

Walker was particularly critical of the plan’s lack of consideration of climate change and has called for it to be central to a rewrite of the plan.

He pointed to the 2008 CSIRO study which said the the southern basin would get warmer and drier, likely resulting in “significantly less run-off into the river systems in the 21st century”.

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He also called for a fresh review of the northern basin, which had been subject to “gross maladministration by the MDBA”.

“It is an example of how the current management of the MDBA has shown itself unwilling and incapable of fulfilling its statutory functions and obligations,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... nistration