A 5 metres deep section of a five-year old "groundwater drain" in South Australia's Upper South East.
One of many sections where wind blown sand blocks barely existent drainage flows, after being cleaned out and the bank repaired a year after its construction! Nearly 60km of drain lies up-stream, and beyond that lies the Tatiara Creek and its catchment. The State Government claims that these drains only need desilting once every 20 years, based on its "80 years of experience"!
A few kilometres downstream.
Water drained from acid sulfate soils ponded behind another blockage. This kangaroo died a few metres from a "fauna ramp". Was it poisoned by the water? Or did it get stuck in the monosulfidic black ooze sediment?








Latest news:


18th November 2009

Draining experience

Recent government and media reports reinforce landholders' suspicions that officials responsible for managing SA's government mandated $80 million Upper South East dryland salinity and flood management program have been inflexibly obsessed for over a decade with digging a damaging and costly 650km regional deep drain network, rather than being focused on improving environmental and agricultural outcomes using natural, productive solutions adapted to the region's different land types and to its rapidly drying climate.

They also explain why another 3-year extension to enabling legislation is being debated in the State's Parliament, and why a project to divert water into our over-drained region has now been added to the program.

In early July, the program board's chairman, Roger Wicks, told ABC regional radio listeners that our past dryland salinity problems (receding naturally for 15 years) occurred because salt that had accumulated under cleared native vegetation on hills had been mobilised only to resurface on adjacent lower flats.

Wicks claimed that deep drains were needed to treat this symptom of vegetation clearance, whereas CSIRO recommended treating the cause by re-planting now denuded hills with deep-rooted perennial plants and pastures.

When the first extension to the program's enabling legislation was being debated, the responsible minister, Gail Gago, clearly misinformed, told Parliament that the land area required to be re-planted with perennial vegetation to control dryland salinity was nearly three times greater than advised by CSIRO. The grossly exaggerated area, conveniently considered "unattainable", was used to justify continued digging of deep drains.

In mid July, Adrian Gargett, the program's director, offered landholders restricted permits to graze drain corridors on their compusorily acquired land (a 200m wide swathe taken without compensation) in exchange for maintaining subsiding drain banks and controlling now spreading weeds, foxes and rabbits.

A month later, Rob Freeman, the Chief Executive of the responsible department (evidence recently challenged in a Parliamentary inquiry) for most of the current program, was reported to be unconvinced by the science of climate change. It appears that the program's senior leadership may thus have been guided by a view that the region's drying climate and naturally falling watertables were anomalies that could be ignored.

Add to this the 2004 claims by program hydrologist Michael Durkay that the Fairview deep drain dug in 1998 had "minimal impact" on watertables, and unpublished observations that the Mount Charles deep drain in the Northern Catchment, dug in 2004, was having no discernible effect on watertables at 500m and beyond, where dryland salinity continues to exist.

... and reports: that drains had been dug through several thousand hectares of potential acid sulfate soils despite published, but now withdrawn, government concerns; of a net increase in emissions of greenhouse gasses that annually exceed in mass the salt drained away from the region; of wetlands drained or poisoned by the program; ... and so on.

The region's near two-decade deep drain nightmare is set to continue for at least another three years.


13th July 2009

Government again mangles science?


25th May 2009

Stock Journal battle


Click for more stories.


More landholder views on the Upper South East program are on the "Stop the Drains" website.

Snapshots of a man-made environmental disaster:

What's missing from this Upper South East deep drain?


photo of deep dry drain

Water! The South Australian Government claimed "science" proved a drain was needed here to remove saline groundwater and flood water.

In 2002, proportionally fewer landholders in the Upper South East than for the State as a whole rated dryland salinity a land management issue!



cattle grazing lucerne

Land incorrectly classified as saline by the State Government, and incapable of growing lucerne, but here with lucerne, and without drains!

In 2005, salinity assessments were acknowledged in a Commonwealth Government report to have been grossly exaggerated.



wetlands salinized by deep drains

Wetlands destroyed by saline groundwater from deep drains.

The Government's preferred solution to a problem that occurred over 15 years ago is to lower watertables with environmentally damaging and expensive deep drains, rather than understand, and then treat, the causes of dryland salinity.

Watertables in the region have been falling naturally for 15 years, but nobody in the State Government has tried to understand why some landholders are claiming that dryland salinity is still expanding, or why landholders on adjacent properties are able to grow healthy crops and pastures that are supposed to be incapable of growing in such conditions.



wetlands salinized by deep drains

This 250m wide, 16km long monstrosity was dug through a range without approval, and involved the destruction of nearly 200 hectares of protected native vegetation.

It was dug to provide an exit to the Coorong for drainage flows from the north of the region, even though a natural discharge route existed a few kilometres to the north.

And guess what? The Government rolled over and ended up paying for its construction!


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:

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:

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:

If you would like to contribute to this website, or suggest corrections, then please contact the webmaster at the address below.

This update published 29th November 2009
First published 24th January 2005

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