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Article: Dying for a drink: the Murray-Darling Basin desperately needs a flood transfusion.
- Article from:
- Habitat Australia
- Article date:
- October 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Australian Conservation Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE MURRAY RIVER is a national icon. It's our biggest river. It's somewhere people go to unwind. It's a life-giving water source. Through it passes all the water that drains from one-seventh of the nation. And it's part of our national identity.
The Murray-Darling Basin supports around 70 per cent of Australia's irrigated agriculture--dairy, rice, beef, lamb, cotton, fruit, vegetables, winegrapes, etc. Large dams that can store 2 1/2 times the rivers' natural flows, thousands of kilometres of irrigation channels, and numerous locks and weirs have enabled the diversion of huge quantities of water for irrigated agriculture.
All this has come at a high ...