I am getting a little tired of seeing people repost Jeremy Buckingham’s moronic video about Cubbie Station and the Murray/Darling basin.
It’s always the end of the world with these loons. Everything is going wrong, everything’s a disaster, the world is going to end. Unless you vote for us, give us lots of money, and return to the stone age.
Buckingham, by the way, is the same tax-teat-tippling twit who told us that thousands of year old naturally occurring swamp gas was proof of the horrors of fracking.
Buckingham claims Cubbie Station diverts the water from the Balonne/Culgoa catchment before it can reach the Darling and flow downwards into the Murray. They are stealing water from the environment and from other Australian farmers!!!
They are not. In fact, Cubbie Station is an almost perfect example of sustainable water use in arid areas which are also prone to flooding – like much of the Australian outback. It is the kind of development the pudding-headed pixies in the Australian Greens would be supporting whole-heartedly and encouraging others to use as a model, if they actually cared about Australian workers or the environment. They don’t.
I have lived on the Balonne River, which is what the Condamine is called as it starts to move down toward the Darling. And I have lived at Murray Bridge. That doesn’t make me an expert. But it does mean I have some idea of issues at both the upper and lower reaches of the Murray-Darling. And I have visited Cubbie Station.
Cubbie Station is a miracle of engineering, common-sense and foresight. It has massive water storage capacity: just over 500 megalitres. And it has large and efficient recycling systems.
Essentially it relies on the rain-bearing storms which occur every ten years or so. Cubbie acts as a flood mitigation system. It catches water from those ten year floods which would otherwise cause damage downstream and then be lost to evaporation. Because it takes flood water which would otherwise be lost, Cubbie is able to take just over one quarter of one percent of the Murray’s total flow, but without affecting at all the useful environmental flow, or the amount of water available to recreational or agricultural users. In addition, Cubbie filters and recycles constantly to maximise water use and minimise loss. When water can no longer be recycled, it is sequestered so that not a drop of fertiliser or pesticide flows into river catchment.
As I said, it is exactly the kind of carefully planned, carefully managed system which greenies should be having parties to celebrate if they cared about Australian land, industry, workers or environment.
Did I mention that Cubbie is managed by an Australian company with an Australian workforce, has revitalised the town of Dirranbandi, is the town’s major employer, and generates about $100 million in export revenue every year?
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