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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-11-17 Daily Xml
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COORONG

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:49): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Conservation. What work is currently being done by the government and local communities to help protect the Coorong and Lower Lakes?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Environment and Conservation, Minister for Early Childhood Development, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister Assisting the Premier in Cabinet Business and Public Sector Management) (14:49): I thank the honourable member for her question and acknowledge her deep commitment to our natural environment. I think that all South Australians are aware of and are very concerned about the current state of the Coorong and Lower Lakes. The whole of the Murray-Darling system is showing the effects of decades of overuse by the upstream states, exacerbated by the ongoing drought, but nowhere is this more obvious than at the Lower Lakes and our internationally recognised Coorong wetlands.

While we are planning for a long-term future for the lakes, we are at the moment taking steps that we ensure our fair share of the waters of the River Murray Basin in the future. At the same time as focusing on those long-term measures, there are some important short-term steps that need to be taken in the nature of emergency decisions on how best to protect these precious areas.

We need to give them a chance to recover from the incredible stresses that they are under, so that we do have something to preserve in the future. One of the greatest threats to the lakes is from acidification. Mr Speaker, you will be aware that, as the lakes dry, they acidify and the subsequent rewetting of those soils can release acid into the water body, and this has the potential to cause long-term harm to the lakes and everything in them.

One of the methods of combating this acidification is through bioremediation and that includes revegetation which stabilises the soils and assists the natural processes in reducing acidification. With the assistance of the federal government and its commitment of $10 million, South Australia has now commenced the Lower Lakes bioremediation program and this follows some successful trials of bioremediation techniques earlier this year.

The program depends for its success on a partnership between the government and local communities, and I particularly want to thank the Goolwa to Wellington Lower Lakes Action Planning Group, the Coorong District Local Action Planning Group, the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin NRM Board, the Milang Old Schoolhouse Community Centre and, of course, the Ngarrindjeri and all the other community groups who are involved in the nursery program.

The program has a very strong emphasis on revegetation. Extensive plantings on the exposed lake beds will be undertaken, but in order to undertake the planting we need thousands of plants, so today I am pleased to announce that $50,000 will be made available to local nurseries to propagate plants for this important revegetation work.

Seven local nurseries in Meningie, Milang, Finniss, Clayton Bay, Hindmarsh Island, Narrung and Goolwa will all receive funding through the Milang Progress Association to provide the plants that we need. I would like to thank the Milang Progress Association and the many volunteers who have helped on this initiative. Their work will make a huge difference to the future of this area and a big contribution to our ongoing work to protect the Coorong and the Lower Lakes. It is noted by Mike Hinscliff, the President of the Milang Progress Association, that it will be a welcome boost to communities struggling with the lakes' plight.

Of course, what the Coorong and the Lower Lakes need most of all is water and members will be aware that I recently announced that 14 gigalitres of water would be flowing back into the Coorong from the South-East following a decision that we took to complete the drainage system in this area, with the environmental benefits that will flow from that. Of course, that will improve as we take steps to put in place the further reflows as part of the further extension of the South-East drainage system.

This government is also securing 120 to 170 billion litres of additional water for the Lower Lakes over this summer in addition to the 50 billion litres of water that we purchased earlier this year. This will assist the lakes to get through a long, dry summer and autumn without sustaining further damage. This, of course, is all part of the extensive set of emergency steps that we have had to take to ensure that this river is able to restore itself to life. Once again, it will depend on those flows coming from the upstream states and we will continue our fight at a national level to secure those.

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