Additional water allocations are welcome, but Murray Darling communities will need to plan for extended dry periods, says Murray Darling Basin Commission CEO Wendy Craik.
Ms Craik paints a grim picture of low storages and low inflows, lower than any previous drought, “lower than the federation drought or the 40s drought”, and of forecast increased temperatures and changed rainfall patterns.
“This [drought] certainly appears to be related to climate change and it’s certainly different from previous droughts,” she says in an interview.
“What we need to do is plan for an environment where what we’re seeing now might be what we might see most of the time in the future, and only occasionally see a flood coming through the system.”
Ms Craik is a keynote speaker at The Regional Water Conference on 20-21 October in Albury.
To bring the Murray fully back to life will require rainfall “of biblical proportions,”
Commenting on the purchase by the Commonwealth of Toorale Station near Bourke, and other property purchases, Ms Craik says: “By itself it won’t do a great deal, but overall it’s going to add to increasing the amount of water for the environment and the general health of the system.”
The water allocations recently gifted by the Queensland Government are also welcome for the environment, she says.
Regarding action to de-stress the system, Ms Craik says: “I think it’s very difficult for humans to do much more than what they’re already doing.
“Communities are already on quite severe water restrictions and minimum volumes are being provided for stock and domestic. There’s only a little bit of water for the environment so we’re making sure we provide enough for people first.
“I guess the only other thing is, and we’re seeing this as well, irrigators who decide they have some water left over that either they don’t want to use or [want to] put away for next year, are donating that for the environment. But above that there’s not a lot else people can do.”
She says that there is no doubt that at some time in the future it will rain again and there will be a flood, “but all the predictions tend to suggest that climate change might be with us, or a changed climate might be with us, for some time to come.”
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