Save Murray Darling Basin

The Murray Darling Basin is Australia's largest drainage system - it covers about 15% of the continent - it includes the three largest rivers in Australia - and it extends 3,750 kilometres from the mouth of the Murray near Adelaide to the source of the Condamine near Brisbane.

Three million Australians are dependent on this river system. About 85 per cent of all irrigation in Australia takes place in the Murray Darling Basin, which translates to an agricultural industry worth more than $9 billion per annum.

But the Murray doesn't run anymore.

The North-East edge of the basin comes within 200k of the Qld coast at Rainbow Beach.

How hard would it be to build a 200 kilometer pipeline from a solar desalinator on the coast to the headwaters of the river?

At the moment the Queensland Government is building a 200k pipeline to bring recycled water to the Swanbank and Tarong power stations.

The capacity was originally to be 250 Megalitre per day but this has now fallen to 140 Ml/Day - and the cost which was proposed at $1.7bn is now widely accepted to be well over that.

But river ecologists are saying that annual flows of 1500 gigalitres a year would restore the Murray. This translates into a bit over 4,000 megalitres a day - about 15 times more than the Qld government set out to provide to 2 power stations.

Ok, would it cost 15 times more? That would be $26bn - I wonder what it would cost to build the Snowy Mountains Scheme now?

And I wonder if getting the Murray to run all year long might have a bigger effect than several Snowy Schemes.