Developing Australias Tropical Water Resources

In a paper presented to the 2013 Fenner Conference in Canberra, I

described the economic opportunities and environmental risks that
may arise from the proposed agricultural expansion in Australias
tropical north. I had blogged on that same topic back in Nov 2011
(Northern Australias fascinating wetness) and this was a chance to
update my own thinking, based on extensive scientific and
economic analysis undertaken by CSIRO and the Northern
Australia Task Force. The new liberal (read conservative for
foreign readers) government in Australia had just re-activated calls
for a new Australian food bowl for the world in our tropical north,
built on the perception of abundant water and fertile soils, so it
seemed most timely to do so.
The proceedings of that Fenner Conference will be out soon, so I
thought it might be useful to highlight here some of the key points I
make in that paper, broadly addressing two main questions:
As Australia looks increasingly to its tropical northern lands as a
prospective food-bowl for Asia we should reflect on two important
questions:
(i) Have we gained sufficient knowledge and wisdom from a century
of unsustainable irrigation practices in southern Australia to do
things differently in the future?
(ii) Is Northern Australia really the agricultural utopia that some in
the community argue, and do the potential rewards justify the risks
to our largely pristine and biodiverse tropical river basins?
In part one in this series (from the conference paper), I first
describe the environmental consequences of water resources
development in Australias south in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Part 1. Understanding and managing the causes of
environmental damage arising from irrigated agriculture
1.1 Landscape and Catchment impacts
The sustainable management of land and soils has always been a
fundamental challenge for Australia and, unfortunately, it is
something we were poor at for a very long time. The combination of
unconstrained clearing of native vegetation, particularly in hilly
terrains, combined with the erosive power of high-intensity
Australian rainfall led to massive soil erosion problems in many
farming areas.
This led to a double-whammy outcome where (i) farmers lost fertile
top-soils and damaged their lands through gullying, and (ii) the
river environment down-stream of these agricultural areas suffered
as farm soils and sands were washed away during heavy rainfall,
muddying river waters and smothering stream-bed habitats
essential for the survival of riverine biota.
Along with soil and fine sediment, fertilisers and pesticides may be
transported from farms into rivers, wetlands and coastal water,
especially when they are applied poorly or in excess of crop needs.
These too have a negative impact on receiving waters either by
stimulating unwanted algal blooms or by being toxic to native
animals in the river system.
The positive news is that thanks to a combination of good scientific
and agronomic research over the past two to three decades,
combined with extensive on-ground trials by land-holders (funded
and carried out through various programs such as Landcare and
various regional National Resource Management groups) we now
have a reasonably good handle on the most appropriate agricultural
practices for stopping erosion and retaining soils on-farm, and for
minimising fertiliser and pesticide run-off. For example, in the
Great Barrier Reef coastal catchments, where restoration and
prevention programs are in now place to improve farming practices
which will minimise soil and fertiliser wash-off.
Another major problem in Australia agriculture has been soil
salinisation. This has two different settings and causes, arising
separately on dry-land and irrigation farms. In both cases,
mobilised salt can travel from farms back into adjacent rivers by
natural run-off processes or via irrigation drains causing river
salinity problems tens or hundreds of kilometres downstream. This
was the situation in which the people of Adelaide found themselves
in the 1960s and 1970s, eventually necessitating huge engineering
interventions[i] to stop the salt from reaching the River Murray and
Adelaides water supplies which are drawn from it.
From a river ecosystem perspective, the biggest impact arising from
the development of irrigated agriculture in southern Australia,
indeed throughout the world, has been the building of large dams
on rivers to store and distribute water . Dams on rivers have two
major types of ecological impact. First, there are physical impacts
they are a barrier to the necessary upstream and downstream
movement of aquatic animals, especially fish. Second, there are
hydrological impacts by capturing water for irrigation, dams
reduce downstream flow volumes and velocity, and also change the
timing and pattern of flows.
The hydrological changes can be highly detrimental to river biota,
especially to the plants and animals living or breeding on the rivers
floodplain. They rely on regular flooding to sustain their growth or
to stimulate seed germination or animal breeding. Small to medium
sized floods, occurring every year or so are of particular ecological
benefit and it is these that are most reduced by dams (large floods
pass through a river system more or less unaffected).
The dampening of the natural variability in downstream flows by
dams also impacts on fish in the river channel, which rely on certain
flow velocities or water depths eg. as a cue for migration. Water
released from large dams is also often much colder than that
naturally flowing in a river and this may also impact negatively on
fish breeding.
On-farm dams large and small can also cause serious eco-
hydrological problems, even if individually they are much, much
smaller than on-river dams. When there are many in a catchment,
across many farms, their combined impact on run-off and river
flows can be significant (Nathan and Lowe 2012).
Further, in the so-called unregulated reaches of the northern
Murray Darling Basin where there are no large dams on rivers, large
on-farm dams harvest river waters during flood times for later use
on crops, mostly cotton (these are often known as ring-tanks
because of the way they are constructed). While this might sound
harmless enough, perhaps even beneficial, the combined impact of
large ring-tanks on downstream river flows and biota can be
serious.
Smaller weirs are built on rivers to provide a local head of water to
allow gravity supply of water for irrigation (and for some towns).
We learned early on that fish cannot move up and down the river to
feed or breed if there are weirs blocking their path. Some weirs are
removable or have gates that can be fully opened at certain times of
the year to allow fish to move past. In other weirs, fish ladders were
built to allow fish to move past them. Unfortunately our original
designs were taken from Europe and were based on the behaviour
of salmon. Salmon are fish that jump but our sluggish Australian
fish are not much when it comes to jumping!
After some good local research in the 1980s and 1990s, we realised
that ladders could be designed to better suit Australian fish (fig 4),
and even fish lifts have been built where fish can swim in at the
bottom, get lifted up in a cage and swim out upstream at the top.
Finally, one other thing that that has been learned is that clearing
vegetation right down to the water line of the river is not a good
idea. The stream-side or riparian vegetation plays many key roles in
maintaining a healthy river. It filters out (some but not all)
nutrients running off the land before they reach the stream, as well
as stabilising river banks, shading smaller streams and otherwise
providing habitat for animals, aquatic and terrestrial.
Now that we properly understand the importance of river riparian
corridors and the impacts of clearing, much restoration work has
been undertaken. This includes physical works to reshape river
banks (where badly eroded) and the re-establishment of endemic
vegetation (and the removal of invasive, exotic species such as
Willows where required).
One other catchment-scale impact, while largely out of sight, that
should not be ignored is the (unsustainable) use of groundwater.
Where pumping by farmers exceeds the rate of
replenishment,[ii] the groundwater level decreases, making
pumping more expensive or even impossible in extreme cases. At
the same time, unsustainable pumping can negatively affect so-
called groundwater-dependent ecosystems (Murray et al. 2003).
These could include certain types of wetlands where water supply
from below is important (other wetlands rely on surface run-off
only), some woodlands and the mound springs of the Great Artesian
Basin.
1.2 Local or Habitat impacts
The range of local impacts of agriculture on river and floodplain
habitats the places where plants and animals live, feed and
reproduce is broad. Many are directly linked to the catchment-
scale impacts outlined above, while there are others that arise due
to distinctly local factors. Habitat degradation linked to agricultural
practices in a rivers catchment include:
(i) Sand smothering of river bed habitats impacts
particularly on invertebrates that live and feed on the bottom of
streams, and which are also the food source for many fish and other
animals (eg. platypus) (fig. 2b).
(ii) Fine sediment run-off makes water more turbid with
lower penetration of sunlight into the water. In turn, this affects the
ability of plants to grow below the waters surface. These submerged
plants are an important part of healthy river ecosystem.
(iii) Fertiliser run-off stimulates the growth of nuisance,
filamentous algae that grow on submerged logs and rocks these
crowd-out the formation of natural microbial biofilms which are a
more palatable food source for river animals.
(iv) Changed local water depth, flow velocity or water
temperature caused by upstream dams may impact directly on the
local habitat suitability for many animals including fish, turtles and
mussels.
Habitat degradation that is not linked to upstream catchment
condition, but arises due to local farming impacts include:
(i) Edge habitat destruction caused by cattle given direct
access to the river for watering. Many riparian restoration programs
across Australia now fund farmers to fence off their lands from the
river and to provide alternative watering points. Cattle defecating in
streams under these circumstances also create local pollution
problems as well as further downstream (including potential human
health problems from drinking water which is contaminated by
animal intestinal parasites such asCryptosporidium and Giardia).
(ii) Levees and block-banks on the floodplains farmers with
lands adjacent to rivers may construct levees to divert minor flood-
waters away from, or towards, certain parts of their property. While
the local ecological effects of this may be minimal, there are
situations where such works cause the drying out of wetlands or
woodlands further along the floodplain.
1.3 Lessons learned
The upside of this wide-range of impacts that have arisen through
the development of irrigated agriculture is that, as scientists,
managers, farmers and concerned citizens, we have learned a great
deal about how not to go about developing and maintaining a large,
productive agricultural system! For any new irrigation
development, including any proposed for Northern Australia, we
can reasonably claim knowledge of the impacts of past agricultural
practices and that we have learned ways of carrying out irrigated
agriculture far more wisely.
To summarise, we have learned that sustainable irrigated
agriculture should include the following catchment and farm-scale
practices:
(i) Clearing land sufficient to grow crops and no more,
retaining as much native vegetation on-farm as possible
(ii) Protecting vegetation along riparian zones, including
fencing where necessary, and on steeper slopes or other areas of
higher erosion risk
(iii) Adopting modern tillage and other agronomic practices that
maximise water and soil retention on farm (and that enhance soil
fertility)
(iv) Applying water sufficient to meet crop needs and no more,
using modern high-efficiency irrigation delivery systems (viz.
micro-irrigation, pressurised supply, etc.)
(v) Controlling the application of fertilisers and pesticides, at
the lowest practical levels, and retaining any drainage waters on
farm (unless otherwise proven safe to discharge)
(vi) Avoiding or minimising the need for dams, especially large
dams. If dams must be built (and, to be clear, this is not desirable)
the combined storage volume of dams on a river system should
be much less than the mean annual run-off upstream of where the
dam is to be built. (Note: in the Murray-Darling Basin the combined
dam storage volume is 1.5 times mean annual run-off, hence the
huge magnitude of their ecological impacts.)
(vii) Implementing regulatory controls on the construction of
farm dams and floodplain banks and levees
(viii) Adopting the combined and sustainable use of surface water
and groundwater for example, between wet and dry seasons. This
should be optimised to maximise supply reliability and to minimise
impacts on all water-dependent ecosystems.
(ix) Applying ecologically-defined limits on the total amount of
water that can be withdrawn for irrigation from a river or
groundwater system in any season/year.
There are many other sustainable practices that should be adopted
this list is meant to be illustrative rather than inclusive. The key
message is that ecologically-sustainable irrigated agriculture is
technically feasible, if we have the intelligence and the conviction to
implement it fully.
Whether or not politicians have the motivation or the will to fully
implement the required approaches and practices is another
question. Ecologically-sustainable irrigation comes at a cost in
increased system development and operating costs, in reduced area
of agricultural farmlands or water available for production, or both.
But the costs of environmental degradation itself are economically
real not just unforeseeable externalities although they may not
be observed for years or decades, certainly well beyond the life-time
of most politicians.
Herein may lie the dilemma for irrigated agriculture in Northern
Australia.