18 September
2006 - The Bookpurnong Salt Interception Scheme
has been officially opened in South Australia’s
Riverland as part of an $11 million commitment
to reducing the threat salinity poses to the River
Murray and its flood plains.
The project is an example of
governments across Australia working together
with a local community to tackle a national problem
like salinity in the River Murray.
The Australian and South Australian
governments are contributing funding equally to
the project and it’s also being supported by the
Victorian and NSW governments through the Murray
Darling Basin Commission.
The Australian Ministers for
the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell,
and Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Peter
McGauran; and the South Australian Ministers for
the Environment and Conservation, Gail Gago, and
the River Murray, Karlene Maywald, noted the project’s
benefits.
Minister McGauran said the Scheme,
which is being jointly funded through the National
Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality ($6.3
million - SA and Australian governments) and the
Murray Darling Basin Commission ($4.8 million
– Australian, SA, NSW and Victorian governments),
would stop tonnes of salt entering the River Murray
each day in the Bookpurnong area.
“The Murray supports a large
amount of Australia’s agricultural production
and is a vital source of drinking water for Adelaide
and other communities. Salinity is threatening
this important natural resource and projects like
Bookpurnong are taking a big step towards managing
salinity in Australia,” Minister McGauran said.
“In 1997 the flood plains surrounding
the Murray were in a bad state – water twice as
salty as seawater was flowing into the River.
Over the next 30 years, the Bookpurnong Salt Interception
Scheme will be extracting around 110 tonnes of
salt a day that would otherwise have flowed into
the Murray,” Minister McGauran said.
Senator Campbell said the project
would see the groundwater in highly-degraded flood
plains lowered to allow for rehabilitation and
possibly allow land to come back into productive
use.
“The system involves constructing
a series of bores and pipelines next to the Murray
to intercept highly saline groundwater before
it is discharged into the river. Once the water
levels have dropped, community work such as landscape
revegetation and flood plain rehabilitation will
commence,” Senator Campbell said.
Minister Gago said the salt
interception process had proven very effective
in preventing both natural and irrigation-induced
flows of saline groundwater from entering the
Murray.
Minister Maywald said salt interception
schemes were a key component of the Basin Salinity
Management Strategy to address long term salinity.
For more information on the
National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality
visit www.nrm.gov.au.
