Welcome
Welcome to this landholder-run website on South Australia's Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Program.
Our main objective is to provide regional landholders with information (without government spin) on the causes, effects and management of dryland salinity. However, other visitors from the state and from outside the region, including from more than 60 countries since early 2007, will also discover lessons learned on how not to repair environmental damage using inappropriate, unverified, but government-mandated, land management practices!
After this home page, the Detrimental Effects, References, and Media webpages are the most popular, and the most popular down-loads are historical summaries of watertable records, especially those associated with the region's trial Fairview Drain. These files can be accessed by clicking here and scrolling down to the paragraphs on regional watertables, and to later paragraphs on the Fairview Drain.
Background
The program was conceived in the early 1990s, when dryland salinity and flooding in the region were predicted to grow as a result of rising watertables. Although the region always had naturally high watertables, wide-scale government-legislated clearance of native vegetation, uncoordinated digging of deep drains to relieve flooding, followed by a period of above average rainfall, led to a reported increase in dryland salinity and flooding.
The State Government committed to addressing these problems, and in the mid 1990s a 270km network of deep drains to remove excess groundwater and surface water became the dominant component in a proposed integrated program to protect and improve the region's agricultural productivity and environmental health. However, project approval was subject to the successful completion of a deep drain trial, to a thorough evaluation of the program's underlying science, and to a condition that preference should be given to digging cheaper and less environmentally damaging surface drains.
Deep drains attract high capital, maintenance and operating costs, and have adverse effects on soils, wetlands and native vegetation. Deep drains also address a symptom of past inappropriate land management practices, and not the root causes of dryland salinity. Other potential remedies for dryland salinity include improving soil structure and vegetation cover on susceptible land, and re-planting deep-rooted perennial vegetation on high ground to prevent excess groundwater recharge, which would otherwise cause deep-lying saline groundwater to be forced up closer to the land surface in low lying areas. These land management approaches differ markedly from deep drains - they are environmentally sustainable, and are directly associated with generating income.
However, the early 1990s' predictions of rising watertables turned out to be completely wrong (watertables commenced their current falling trend in the mid-1990s), and groundwater removal in the deep drain trial in the late 1990s was found to be considerably less than predicted.
In 2002, official State Government documents (none released formally to the public) reported that:
- the trial drain (Fairview Drain) removed less than 20% of predicted groundwater volumes, and deep drainage was damaging soils, wetlands and native vegetation,
- the network was probably uneconomic when realistic benefits were compared with economic and environmental costs (none of which had been fully updated in the very short time made available by the State Government to do the study),
- watertables had been falling naturally for seven years (contrary to claims made in 2002 and inferred in 2005 by State Government staff in a submission to the responsible Minister), and
- proportionally fewer landholders in the Upper South East than for the whole of the State considered dryland salinity to be a land management issue!
Also in 2002, and dismissing advice to the contrary, the State Government proposed (and then mandated in enabling legislation) an increase in the network's size to 650km of deep drains. The total program cost blew out threefold to an estimated $75million. Realistic operating and maintenance costs for the program are now an estimated $4-8 million a year - current budget estimates still remain at one-tenth of this figure.
In late 2006, an extension to the 2002 enabling legislation was justified by the responsible Minister in the State's Parliament using a gross misinterpretation, and obvious misunderstanding, of advice provided by CSIRO scientists! Then, in early 2007, the State Government announced a $14million expansion to the network, by adding even more drains and floodways, but this time to divert up to 50 gigalitres of water into the region from the south to freshen its now over-drained and poisoned wetlands.
Needless to say, State Government claims on the volume of fresh water available for diversion have been grossly exaggerated. Historically, before climate change seriously impacted on the region, official records show that 157 gigalitres of water was discharged annually into the sea from the Blackford Drain, and Drains L and M. However, such flows have not been experienced for nearly 15 years, and recent records now show discharge volumes average only about one-tenth of the earlier flows!
Incorrect 15-year old predictions on watertable trends and on drain performance continue to inform decision-making, without the State Government making any serious attempt to validate their accuracy. There is also a growing body of evidence that information provided by scientists to program officials has been misinterpreted, selectively reported, or exaggerated, with the result that support for the program from parliamentarians, landholders, and the public, has been inappropriately sustained.
Testimonials from a few farmers who believe they have benefited from deep drains remain the State Government's primary means of demonstrating that the network is achieving positive results. Whole-of-life benefits and costs have rarely, if ever, been objectively quantified. In particular, short- and long-term economic and environmental costs, and the contribution of naturally falling watertables and other factors, have not been reported publicly. Examples of landholders who have successfully turned saline land into productive land without deep drains also go unreported. Click here (1.2MB PDF file) and here (1.7MB PDF file, page 6) for two of these inconvenient stories.
Reinforcing increasing calls for a long overdue (and apparently required annually by Commonwealth Government legislation) independent inquiry into the program are claims of enormous volumes of greenhouse gases now being emitted as a direct consequence of the drain network. A net increase of an estimated one million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide equivalent gases has been attributed to chemical reactions in newly drained soils, and to changed agricultural practices. This is ten times more than the salt removed by the drain network (100,000 tonnes anually, not the 250,000 tonnes reported by Government officials), which is not even keeping up with the 250,000 tonnes of salt that falls naturally in rain on the Upper South East catchment each year. The drain network is thus more efficient at producing greenhouse gases than it is removing saline groundwater!
Before the introduction of European farming practices, which included extensive drain digging and clearance of native vegetation from the region, salt was continuously discharged naturally to the sea:
- in the slow westerly flow of extensive interconnected aquifers, and
- in surface water flows via the Coorong in the north-west.
Recently reported proposals to develop a huge brown coal deposit (the most prolific producer of carbon dioxide of all fossil fuels) in the south of the Upper South East, which will feed a proposed 300 Megawatt power station, will add even more greenhouse gas emissions to the total, and undoubtedly bring about the final death of the region's last remaining pristine wetlands, including the Coorong. Go to the media reports webpage to read more.
This website
This website provides several examples of misinterpreted or apparently misrepresented science and analysis being inappropriately used to gain and sustain support for the dominant drain component of the Upper South East program.
Information has been provided by, or derived from, several sources, in particular:
- landholders,
- state, Commonwealth and university scientists,
- government officials,
- media reports, press releases, official Hansard transcripts, and State and Commonwealth Government reports on the program, and
- numerous national and international scientific and analytical reports on dryland salinity, drains, and related matters.
If you would like to contribute to this website, or suggest corrections, then please contact the webmaster at the address below.
