Greeny News

environmentalists and farmers' groups expressed dismay at the long-awaited plan to save the Murray-Darling Basin

plan a long-awaited $ A10bn to safeguard the future of the expansion, but poorly Murray-Darling Basin, known as "the food bowl of Australia", has dismayed environmentalists and farmers.

The future of the basin has become a problem more and more rebels in Australia, which experienced a decade of drought before the rains this year. Environmentalists have faced agriculture and groups of irrigation on the amount of water diverted to support agriculture and other industries in the basin, which produces about 90% of the supply of fresh food in Australia.

The plan of the Authority of the Murray-Darling Basin in the project, released Monday, recommends that 2750 gigalitres of water is returned to the system a year to replace. This figure, which will be implemented gradually over the next seven years, is well below the 4000 gigalitres outlined in a policy paper last year, and some studies have suggested up to 7600 gigalitres may be necessary for the river to recover.

A complicating factor is the size of the pool - which covers an area equivalent to France and Spain, which extends from southern Queensland and Victoria with NSW at the mouth of river Murray in South Australia. A total of six separate state governments, territorial and federal governments to oversee the river system.

The drought in a decade-long to the increasing demand for irrigation water in the basin of 2.1 million people, has put enormous pressure on the Murray and Darling rivers and their tributaries. Less than half of the water flowing through the system reaches the sea

However, the proposed plan contains only voluntary buyouts of water. Alarm was also raised more than double in terms of extraction of groundwater and the lack of analysis allows the impact of future climate change in the basin.