Save Murray-Darling, Build The Clarence Scheme!

Grafton Floodwaters Would Save Murray-Darling—Build The Clarence Scheme!

Once again, the Clarence River is in flood at Grafton, NSW, but if the Clarence River Scheme—which has been on the books since at least the early 1920s—had been built, that water would now be on its way down the Darling River, to save the parched towns, farms and lakes of South Australia.

The scheme would divert the waters of the upper Clarence and Nymboida Rivers over the Great Dividing Range into the Dumaresq River, and on into the Macintyre, Barwon, and Darling Rivers, before flowing into the Murray River near Mildura, and on down to South Australia. Additionally, a nearby Macleay River project would divert water into the Gwydir River and on into the Barwon and Darling Rivers.

Emeritus Professor Lance Endersbee designed the Clarence Scheme as a pump storage scheme, which can take advantage of surplus off-peak electricity to pump water over the range and into storage dams, which will then produce hydroelectricity from an annual flow of water comparable to that of the Snowy Mountains diversion.

(Professor Endersbee was Dean of Engineering and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Monash University, at the end of a long career which included distinguished work on the Snowy Mountains Scheme, Tasmania’s hydro scheme, and hydroelectric schemes in Southeast Asia.)

He told a Citizens Electoral Council conference in 1997, “There is the catchment of the Clarence River and it is a wonderful little cup in there, and very steep country, high rainfall and one of the highest rainfall areas in Australia, and they get the summer rains down from the monsoons coming down and they get the winter rains as well.

“So there is a lot of rainfall there and it all flows out into the sea, and if you have been to Grafton, you know how wide the Clarence River is at Grafton. It’s a big river.

“So I have ... designed a scheme for the diversion of the Clarence into the Darling. Now ... there is a lot of algae in the Darling... This would flush all the algae out of the Darling.”

Most importantly, the Clarence River diversion would go a long way to saving the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s food bowl, which produces 40 per cent of the national agricultural output, and comprises 75 per cent of Australia’s irrigated land.

Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood called on the nation’s political leaders to act with foresight for the future. “We called to build the Clarence Scheme back in August 2001 when we released our book What Australian Must Do to Survive the Depression and then in February 2002 we published a Special Report, The Infrastructure Road to Recovery including the Clarence and Macleay projects. Nothing has been done and now we’re left with a bill for flood damage and an agricultural sector dying for lack of water. This inaction must stop now.

“Mr Rudd, pay attention—this, not broadband, is nation-building,” he declared.

ENDS

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