Concerns farms led to a massive fish kill in Menindee

Masses of dead fish floating down the Darling River have shocked the community. But while the government insists it’s a natural event, experts disagree. Read why.

A leading expert in river systems has come out against the government for labelling the masses of dead carp and yabbies seen floating down the Darling River as a “naturally occurring phenomenon”.

“The fish deaths are believed to be attributed to hypoxic blackwater, a naturally occurring phenomenon which causes extremely low dissolved oxygen levels,” a spokesperson for the Emergency Operations Centre set up to manage the incident told The Mildura News.

Dead fish floating down the Darling River at Menindee.

However, locals, a NSW Greens MP and one of Australia’s leading experts on river systems have strongly disagreed.

UNSW Professor Richard Kingsford said the incident had “human fingerprints all over it” and was the result of flooding and mismanagement of river systems.

“This has got human fingerprints all over it, both what’s happening in Menindee in terms of the engineered system and the way we poorly manage the Darling River upstream,” Professor Kingsford said.

“It’s been coming for a long time.”

Professor Kingsford believed the event was the result of private and government dams not allowing the water to flow the way it would naturally.

“A lot of the flows that naturally would have come down the river are now caught in large dams,” he said.

“Big government-built dams were built generally in about 1970 as well a lot of private dams for some of the cotton farms.

“It’s less likely that this would have happened without the dams in place.”

Greens MP Cate Faehrmann, who chaired an inquiry into floodplain harvesting, also attributed the problem to the government allowing construction of private dams for cotton farming.

NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmmann is currently the only government MP to show up to the unfolding crisis in Menindee

“At the Menindee town hall meeting I went to, quite a few of the locals said that too much water is being taken for big agriculture up the river,” she said.

“The NSW government has handed out massive quantities of what are called floodplain harvesting licenses for all the big cotton and corporate farming.

“That’s what is being blamed for the demise of the Darling Barker.”

Ms Faehrmann said locals who had lived in the area their whole lives believed the government was lying to them.

“A guy who was born the 30s and has lived here his whole life got up at the community summit yesterday, and [said] ‘I have never seen a fish kill like this,’” she said.

Local table grape grower Graeme McCrabb didn’t mince his words when he called the government’s official statement “bull s-t”

“You can smell the bullsh-t from a mile away,” he said.

“It’s pretty insulting of government departments to rock into town and try and feed us a line.”

According the NSW police Assistant Commissioner Brett Greentree has ensured the clean up operation is ongoing.

“All agencies will continue work over the weekend, which includes the clean-up operation, as well as the monitoring and management of this hypoxic blackwater event,” he said.