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Australia’s Murray River-System: A Looming Crisis…

February 22nd, 2008
By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist

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australia_water_crisis.jpg

The river-systems in the world are under heavy strain with many facing serious crisis owing to a variety of reasons. Many civilisations prospered on the banks of the mighty rivers…and then perished when the rivers suffered. Although Murray-Darling is Australia’s longest river system, draining a basin the size of France and Spain combined, it no longer carries enough water to carve its own path to the sea.

The Murray and its main tributary, the Darling, are the lifeblood of Australia’s crop farms. It supplies four of the country’s six states. In the past two years, the volume of water flowing into the Murray from the rivers that feed it in New South Wales and Queensland was the lowest since records began in 1892. Officials now say there is a 75% chance of even less water in the Murray system by next June than a year ago.

Please click here for the report in The Economist…

A few months ago the same magazine carried a similar warning…which began like this: “The mouth of the Murray-Darling river sets an idyllic scene. Anglers in wide-brimmed sunhats wade waist-deep into the azure water. Pleasure boats cruise languidly around the sandbanks that dot the narrow channel leading to the Southern Ocean. Pensioners stroll along the beach. But over the cries of the seagulls and the rush of the waves, there is another sound: the mechanical drone from a dredging vessel. It never stops and must run around the clock to prevent the river mouth from silting up. More here…
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This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Water, Nature, Environmental Issues, Australia, Environment. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    Swaraaj, we in the States experienced that long, long ago with the Colorado River. And that was long before contemporary "water wars" between California and Arizona (the best known antagonists) as our Southwest continues to grow in population (with much greater growth in the future as many Baby Boomers move there for retirement rather than join the vast numbers moving to the Southeast).

    There even was a recent water-level problem in the Southeastern USA here (a brief Georgia vs. Alabama and Florida "water war").
 
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