Jennifer Marohasy » Absurd Murray Darling Basin Plan Now Irreversible

Jennifer Marohasy » Absurd Murray Darling Basin Plan Now Irreversible.

We surely are a rich country if we can afford to spend between $3.4 and $5.5 billion in freshwater, water that could otherwise be used to grow food, to keep this narrow and shallow channel open to the Southern Ocean.

But the story as repeated by Mr Burke is actually even more bizarre because the sea dykes that the Minister never mentions, block the flow of freshwater to the mouth.

The sea dykes have also limited the potential for scouring of the Murray’s Mouth by the tides of the Southern Ocean.

Indeed back in 1856, South Australia’s Surveyor General George Woodroffe Goyder recognised the potential of the Mundoo channel to scour the Murray’s Mouth. He suggested the natural process of deepening and widening the Murray’s sea mouth be enhanced by cutting through the rock bar across this channel thus further concentrating tidal water inflow and river water outflow. The rock bar is of calcareous sandstone and a relic of sea level rise about 125,000 years ago. Instead over the last 156 years government policy has worked to stop the tide and block the channel.