Newsletter, 29 November 2009

Welcome to the LakesNeedWater newsletter November edition.

Is it Bio-remediation or future crop land?

LakesNeedWater members were interviewed by ABC's Landline.  The show focused on the 'bioremediation' effort of the Lower Lakes.  What caught some of us by surprise was the fact that some farmers want to plant crops on the drying lakebeds. They see the dried up lakebeds as future crop-able land. You can watch the video here.

French visit the Lower Lakes

In early November, LakesNeedWater was approached by a French TV news team.   We look forward to watching their documentary and will be posting it to the website in the future. Read more about their visit here.

Lake Albert nearly at acidification trigger point - again

We are now tracking the water levels separately for Lake Alexandrina, Lake Albert, and The Goolwa Channel. Notice how close Lake Albert is to the 'acidification trigger' of minus .5 AHD (trigger is identified here in this MDBA report). We also noticed that DEH has changed the 'acidification trigger' of Lake Albert to be minus 1 in this report.  

Weir decision delayed

Disappointing news that the decision about the Pomanda Weir has once again been put off.  Read why the weir is necessary here.

New LakesNeedWater Blog!

We now have an active LakesNeedWater blog.  You can make comments and you can send us ideas on what you'd like to see discussed.  We want to encourage thoughtful analysis of the crisis and promote new ideas.

The recent post "Conjuring up water" is in response to a report by NSW and Adelaide University scientists.  We could not let their 'solution' pass without comment. 

Where's the water?

A farmer from up around the Deniliquin region near the Lachlan River of southern NSW (part of the Murray-Darling Basin) sent in our Photo of the Month below.  The farmers there want South Australian's to realize that many people in many communities have suffered through this prolonged drought.  We will be including this information in a new section of the website soon.

Photo of the Month

70 year old dead Murray Cod 

photo Neimur river (taken by Pastoral Times Newspaper – Deniliquin Feb 09