The House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy will hold a public hearing tomorrow for its inquiry into the management and use of Commonwealth environmental water.
The Committee will hear from the National Farmers’ Federation and the National Irrigators’ Council.
The inquiry is focused on the role of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, including how environmental water is being used, the outcomes achieved and options for improving community engagement.
Further information about the inquiry can be found on the inquiry website at www.aph.gov.au/environmentalwater.
Public hearing details:
Time: 9.50am – 11.10am
Date: Wednesday 23 May 2018
Location: Committee Room 1R1, Parliament House, Canberra
To keep up with global food demand, the UN estimates, six million ha of new farmland will be needed every year. Instead, 12 million ha are lost every year through soil degradation. Australia lost 36 million ha of agricultural land in just the four years from 2005 till 2009. Some of this lost land has occurred because of urban sprawl which is swallowing up some of our best soils close to cities that used to supply the fresh fruit and vegetables. A scathing report by the Royal Commission has gone as far to accuse the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) of negligence and being "incapable of acting lawfully," apparently because they overestimated the amount of water returned to the river by a factor of ten.
The Stanley Plateau nestled in the foothills of the Victorian Alps, is fighting for the right to preserve its water resources from extraction by a company that transports the water to a plant in Albury, across the border in NSW, for bottling. The bottled water from Stanley and surrounding areas is for domestic and overseas distribution processed by a multi-national company. Stanley has commenced fund raising for the next stage of the Cue Springs Water Challenge - an appeal to the Victorian Court of Appeal. The website 
There is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Syria and the "western" media ignore it. On December 22 al-Qaeda aligned Takfiris in the Wadi Barada valley shut down the main water supply for the Syrian capital Damascus. Since then the city and some 5-6 million living in and around it have to survive on emergency water distributions by the Syrian government. That is barely enough for people to drink - no washing, no showers and no water dependent production is possible. Article originally published at 
Entirely predictably, the Murray Darling river system is toxic with effluent again, host to masses of poisonous cyanobacteria. As the Weekly Times reports, "WATER will be switched off to hundreds of farmers and town residents in the Mallee this week as the Murray River blue-green algae emergency worsens. The toxic outbreak now involves almost 500km of the Murray River and has claimed reservoirs, rivers, wetlands and parts of Victoria’s two biggest irrigation districts. Taps were turned off to towns and farms in parts of the southern Mallee late Friday when the algal bloom reached key Wimmera Mallee pipeline pumps near Swan Hill, catching most residents unaware. Experts said a record autumn heatwave, with temperatures soaring above 40C in northwest Victoria this week, was expected to grow the algal bloom until it choked almost all of the Murray River along the NSW-Victoria border within weeks."[1] But these problems have been known for so long now, it seems foolish to believe that we can hope for any resolution that would keep the vast Australian desert from claiming on our only major inland river system. Certainly we should not meddle with the northern river systems, but unfortunately our psychopathic leaders have already started. 
Thanks for the invitation to be involved in your recent Water leadership workshop. I enjoyed the experience. 
Confused about what the US and NATO are doing about Syria? Not satisfied with explanations in the mainstream press? Worried that we are promoting more refugees instead of peace in the region? This article gives a very good simple overview of the history and society in Syria, regional religious pressures, recent events and politics, including water theft, background to ISIS, and Turkey's role in opening the refugee floodgates towards Europe. This article represents the text of a talk at a panel on Syrian refugees given by the author in the United States. You can read more of Judy's work on 
ALEPPO, SYRIA. 12 July 2015: The water crisis is getting bigger. We are boiling water and cooling it to make it clean to drink. A couple of days ago, the Syrian Government took over all water from the water sellers, who are blackmailing the people and asking expensive price for the water. Government and military officers distributed 500 litres per household for free. This pleased many but annoyed others who wanted more and were ready to pay for it. Yesterday's water prices doubled! Many say that the water (which comes from a dam on the Euphrates, which is under the terrorists' control) reached the Sleimaniyyé sector of the city, where the distribution station is located. So it needs couple of days to reach to our house.
ALEPPO, SYRIA: We have received the following report, which attests to knowledge of ISIL using chlorine as a chemical weapon and controlling water supply from the Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates.
The plain truth: 
This song contains photos from protests in multiple US states as well as some from Europe. The footage is very impressive. Music is a great way to communicate, so send this round if you want to help resist the technology that is fracking democracy as well as razing entire landscapes. Fracking costs more than it is worth in terms of production as well, according to Bloomberg. See inside.
This research is significant for Australians who, with government engineered population growth causing rising water costs, are attempting to recycle water in many ways. "Researchers have identified that the use of wastewater to irrigate vegetable crops, which is common across developing countries, may significantly contribute to deadly health risks such as rotavirus, a major cause of diarrhoeal diseases." (Report from Melbourne School of Land and Environment)
An Australian Farm Institute study provides a comprehensive review of what is currently known about the amount and location of Australian agricultural land, the rate of land use change occurring, and how governments make decisions both in Australia and internationally. Whether or not there will be sufficient good quality land available for agriculture in the future has not been a high priority issue for most of the past two hundred years. 
The period since the Murray-Darling Basin Authority released its guide to the proposed plan, nearly two years ago, has been marked by sustained outrage from all quarters. 
Aussies take action! Lock the gate!" Australians to gather in Brisbane to defend water and land from coal and coal-seam gas fracking, which has already been 
Andrew Chapman is calling for a Royal Commission into the Victorian (Wonthaggi) Desalination Plant. We publish here his comments and some early discussion. We also publish some correspondence with Tim Holding, the Minister for Water under the Brumby government. There seems to be wide support for a royal commission into the matter, which is perceived widely as corrupt. The matter of desalination plants is a huge one in Australia where such plants, not necessary when we had a population of 17m only a decade ago, have been introduced in nearly every state with the excuse that our growing population requires them. The public have not been adequately consulted on the population growth induced by ill-considered government policy nor on the introduction of these plants themselves. What is for sure is that almost no-one likes these plants and governments are bitterly resented for having forced them on Australians. 
Australia uses huge volumes of water to produce products for export, but cannot find enough water to keep its river systems alive.
Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) – independent authority or rubber stamp? 
Remember the lesson of the great Newfoundland cod fisheries. Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous gives a description of fish so plentiful that the waters seethed with them. In 1977 Canada tried to stop the reduction of the cod stocks by declaring 320 kilometers off Newfoundland off limits to foreign factory ships. The local industry flourished, bringing prosperity to Newfoundland. In the 1980s marine biologists warned that the future was threatened by the heavy fishing and recommended an annual target of 125,000 tonnes of cod. But the community outcry about the economic and social damage made the government set the target at 235,000 tonnes. Stocks fell below a sustainable level and in June 1992 one of the richest natural resources was closed down. 30,000 jobs were lost and Newfoundland fell into rapid economic declin
Jan Beer, Plug The Pipe spokesperson and environmental activist in opposition to North-South Pipeline, is taking legal action against Government Agency Melbourne Water for alleged infringements of her right to privacy over a 2 year period.
Comments yesterday from Tony Burke, Federal Minister with responsibility for water, appear to infringe upon the statutory independence of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, 
Recent legislation to privatise water services in Italy has 
Without obtaining the prior mandate of the electorate, successive Australian governments have been seeking to establish a water-market in this country. For as long as the people of Australia are required to “buy-back” the nation’s water, especially during times of crisis, they will have no water security. Bidding-wars, as currently being waged by Senators Wong and Joyce, are now an unattractive and dangerous feature of Australian water policy: profits arising will be privatised but the impacts will be borne by the Australian public. The electorate of this country must be given the opportunity to indicate whether it wishes its water to be privatised and exposed to global speculation - or protected for future generations of Australians.
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