Coorong, Lower Lakes firm as water priority as outlook predicts ‘challenging’ year for Murray-Darling

The Murray-Darling Basin is facing another year of challenging conditions as authorities battle to safeguard wildlife and habitat from the effects of drought.

• Speirs challenged to repeat criticism outside parlimament
• Marshall lashes Murray-Darling Royal Commission report
• Royal Commission slams Murray-Darling Basin Plan

The Murray-Darling Basin is facing another year of challenging conditions as authorities battle to safeguard wildlife and habitat from the effects of drought.

Inflows for the Murray system totalled 2740 gigalitres last year – just 30 per cent of the long-term average – according to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s outlook for 2019-20.

The report, released Thursday, found substantial inflows were unlikely before July, and fish deaths in the lower Darling in recent months were a “graphic demonstration” of the stress the rivers were under.

The authority warned that opportunities to improve the basin’s rivers and floodplains would be limited in the year ahead, and the focus in very dry areas would be on “avoiding irretrievable loss of species and habitat”.

The forecast is for “very dry” conditions throughout the basin in 2019-20, but it is too early to predict rainfall and flow conditions with any precision.

The report said conditions might improve in some catchments in the southern part of the basin.

Colin Mues, executive director of the authority’s science and knowledge division, said many of the basin’s rivers, wetlands and floodplains had not recovered from the millennium drought and they were about to be hit again by prolonged hot, dry conditions.

“Environmental water will be best used to target and protect critical habitat for native fish and waterbirds that is most at risk of being lost if this drought continues,” he said.

“This approach aims to maintain environmental condition and drought refuges long enough for the environment to bounce back when wetter times return.”

The Darling River below the Menindee weir pool, about 300km upstream of the place where the Darling meets the Murray. Picture: AAP Image/Dean Lewins

In South Australia, the Coorong and Lower Lakes are “likely to be a priority for environmental water delivery in 2019-20, to the extent that water is available”, according to the report. But there might not be much water left to share.

“Allocations for the environment, particularly in the Northern Basin, are expected to remain low due to the very low levels of water in storage,” Mr Mues said.

University of Adelaide Professor Mike Young, of the Centre for Global Food and Resources, said the outlook served as a warning to all irrigators.

“If they're saying it’s going to be tough for the environment, it’s going to be tough for everybody,” he said.

“Those that can may be well advised to consider carrying forward (allocations), rather than selling water.”