South Australia - State News - September 07
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Waste State 30/09/07 Rabbits offset carbon efforts Lucinda Ormonde, The Age South Australia; Sept 07
River Murray dredging gets more funds ; AAP South Australia; Sept 07
Water National 26/09/07 Rudd may help pay for SA desal plant AAP South Australia; Sept 07
18/09/07 Murray Valley growers to sue over water AAP Victoria; New South Wales; South Australia; Sept 07
18/09/07 SA irrigators ponder action over cuts , AAP South Australia; Sept 07
Photo: Quentin Jones
Lucinda Ormonde, The Age
September 30, 2007
A huge surge in the number of rabbits is threatening Australian attempts to curb climate change.
A study by the Canberra-based Invasive Animals Co-operative Research Centre says tree seedlings planted in a national carbon offset scheme are at risk of being eaten by rabbits.
Dr Brian Cooke from the University of Canberra said that the current rabbit problem was "the worst we've seen in 10 years".
Rabbit counts in Victorian and South Australian national parks have recorded the pests multiplying by up to 12 times in the past decade, he said.
As well as causing soil erosion and threatening native vegetation, rabbits eat tree and shrub seedlings, Dr Cooke said.
The research centre said rabbits could impair the carbon-offset industry by eating many of the huge numbers of tree seedlings the industry plants each year. Dr Tony Peacock, the centre's CEO, said rabbits were already causing massive damage to native forests and argued that they would cause similar damage to plantation forests.
Carbon offset schemes plant trees that trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while they grow and store for it up to 70 years. But Leo Kerr from Carbon Neutral, a not-for-profit company through which Australians can offset their carbon emissions, said the company had no problem with rabbits.
It has planted 900,000 trees since it began in 2002.
September 29, 2006 - 11:39AM, AAP
Funds for continued dredging of the River Murray mouth in South Australia have been doubled to $6 million.
The Murray Darling Ministerial Council said the money was additional to $21 million over five years invested in the dredging project by the commission and the SA government.
SA's River Murray Minister Karlene Maywald said the extra funds would permit boating access past the mouth until Easter next year.
"Originally, $3 million was allocated for the Murray mouth dredging but with the widespread drought across the basin ... the council has agreed to allocate $6 million to the project in 2006/07," Ms Maywald said in a statement.
September 26, 2007 - 12:04PM, AAP
A federal Labor government would partner South Australia in building a desalination plant but leader Kevin Rudd has refused to commit to helping other states pay for plants.
Mr Rudd said it was too early to talk about how much a federal Labor government would contribute to the project, which Premier Mike Rann has forecast will cost about $1.4 billion.
Mr Rudd, who was in Adelaide on Wednesday to pledge Labor's support for a water recycling project in the city's northern suburbs, said he had a two hour meeting with Mr Rann on Tuesday night about water resources.
He would not comment on criticisms the state government had failed to act on securing Adelaide's water supply, but said a desalination plant was a long term option.
"Whoever is the government of South Australia in the future this is the sort of project that we want to be a financial partner in to make sure it happens," Mr Rudd told reporters.
"I would say that this approach is necessary when you are looking at the long term challenge of climate change and water."
But Mr Rudd would not commit to offering the same support to other states, with NSW and Victoria both planning to build a plant, and WA a second.
"In each state it will be different but we believe a national response is necessary," Mr Rudd told reporters.
"Climate change is a national challenge, it is a national crisis.
"It is bringing about a real problem for Australian water and we need a national response and after 11 years in office Mr Howard's government has been asleep at the wheel."
A government working group is currently considering the optimal size and location of the proposed South Australian desalination plant on the Gulf St Vincent.
On Tuesday, Mr Rann ruled out using recycled effluent as drinking water in Adelaide, although the Greens said this was short-sighted.
Greens MP Mark Parnell said it would be cheaper and better for the environment to use the desalination technology to treat effluent rather than sea water.
"The beauty is it uses much less energy to turn waste water into drinking water than it does to turn sea water into fresh and we stop environmental damage at the same time," Mr Parnell said.
Mr Rudd also urged Victoria to sign up to the commonwealth's takeover of the Murray-Darling Basin, saying the implications for SA were huge if a result was not soon achieved.
"For South Australia's needs and for the nation's that agreement has to be brought about and I'd urge both parties to get back to the table," he said.
September 18, 2007 - 3:30PM; AAP
Murray Valley farmers have voted to mount a class action against the federal and state governments for failing to provide them with enough water.
But Victorian premier John Brumby says they do not have a strong case.
About 800 growers, who are on water allocations of 10-20 per cent this season, met in Mildura in Victoria's north-east on Monday night and voted in favour of mounting a law suit, Growers Action Group chairman Vince Cirillo said.
Mr Cirillo said irrigators from Victoria, South Australia and NSW voted unanimously at the meeting.
The case is expected to centre on an alleged mismanagement of irrigation water by federal and state governments.
Mr Cirillo said a large part of the problem was the water market system and the ability of non-growers to trade in it, thereby distorting it.
Also, he said releasing "sleeper" licences, to allow large-scale managed investment schemes to develop tens of thousands of hectares of land and receive water allocations, was adding pressure to an already stretched system and forcing small growers out.
"Water's reached an unsustainable level, to buy it at $1,000 a megalitre," Mr Cirillo said.
He said growers wanting to pursue the class action would meet over the next week to discuss their options.
He told AAP he could not yet put a figure on compensation.
"It depends on how much damage is really going to be done, some people could lose everything they've got - they've worked (for) four generations," Mr Cirillo said.
"At the end of the day, you've really got to wonder whether Australia wants farmers to exist.
"If they don't, they should tell us so we can be paid out and do something else - it's a very sad way to run regional towns."
Mr Brumby said farmers were under a lot of stress after years of drought and many wanted someone to blame.
"There's a lot of people that are distressed. (They) can't buy fodder, can't get enough water, can't feed their dairy cows.
"So, I guess in those circumstances people look around, often try and point the finger and blame someone for the fact that it's not raining."
Mr Brumby said he did not expect the case to succeed.
"Water is owned by the crown," he said.
He also expressed concern on Tuesday about reports of sabotage protest action planned against his policy of piping 75 gigalitres water per year from the Goulburn system to Melbourne.
"I'm told there's a piece of paper that says they (opponents) should put gravel on rail lines at level crossings, well, if you put gravel on a rail line it will derail the train and it will threaten or cost people their lives," he said.
AAP
September 16, 2007 - 1:39PM, AAP
South Australian farmers will consider taking legal action to demand the state government compensate them for income lost due to cuts in water allocations from the Murray River.
Ian Zadow, chairman of the SA Murray Irrigators group, which represents about 1,300 mostly citrus, vegetable, grape and dairy farmers, said the group's committee would meet on Tuesday afternoon to consider the issue.
Mr Zadow said he had already spoken to a number of legal advisers who could not see why "we couldn't mount a case".
"I think there's a general belief that when you have an industry that's so important to the country, it's certainly not our fault that we're in this position," he said.
SA irrigators have been allocated water from the Murray since the 1960s. Allocations vary from property to property, and irrigators are able to buy and sell allocations.
The state government last year reduced the allocations to 60 per cent, but the figure is currently 13 per cent and will rise to 16 per cent in October.
Mr Zadow said the income lost by farmers due to the cuts in allocations could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
He said figures from 2005 showed the farm-gate value of goods produced by River Murray irrigators in South Australia was nearly $1 billion.
But SA Premier Mike Rann said the river's inflows were the lowest they had been in 1,000 years.
"I don't know how they could possible sue the government," he told ABC radio.
"It's about what water comes down the River Murray."
Mr Zadow is a potato farmer from Caloote, near Mannum, and like many of the state's farmers, his future is uncertain.
"I normally plant potatoes in the first or second week in July, and that hasn't happened this year, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this stage," he said.