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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chosun Juan" data-source="post: 3824554" data-attributes="member: 92780">The Senate was right on the Murray-Darling proposal. Here's whyDr Jamie Pittock is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and an associate professor at the Australian National University<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/15/the-senate-was-right-on-the-murray-darling-proposal-heres-why" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/15/the-senate-was-right-on-the-murray-darling-proposal-heres-why</a>"Not even the Murray-Darling Basin Authority knows how much water is being pumped out of the river. More than two-thirds of the water used by irrigators in Queensland is unmetered, and more than a third of water use is unmetered in NSW."According to the video in the article, there are 240 dams in the system that hold 30,000 GL (Billions of Litres of water), and yet the MDBA (pushed by irrigators) sought to reduce water returned to the environment by a further 70 GL, despite the originally recommended levels not being achieved. Is there no end to the greed of the corporste irrigating sector ?!"Further, the authority’s proposal included allowing a massive increase of 160 billion litres per year of groundwater to be taken from the poorly-studied aquifers across the region.The Wentworth Group has had serious concerns about the assumptions used to try and justify the proposal.""the NSW government has not reversed regulations that it adopted in 2012 which allow irrigators to extract water when the Darling and tributary rivers have low flows.This is made possible by regulations to allow irrigators to accumulate unused water allocations from year to year, extract up to 300% of water under some water licences, and remove limits on pumping capacity."$13 Billion of taxpayers money, a flawed governance regime, and a near dead river systems basin to show for it !!  :storm:Chosun  :gh:</blockquote>

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