Murray River - Australia's Biggest - 25% Below Prior All-Time Low Flow Record - Age

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THE ailing Murray River experienced its driest year on record in 2006, and would have stopped flowing altogether if it had not been artificially boosted, a water expert has revealed. In another sign of the nation's worsening drought, just 1317 billion litres flowed naturally into the Murray system last year — almost 25 per cent less than the previous minimum of 1740 billion litres in 1902, the final year of the devastating Federation drought.

Murray-Darling Basin Commission general manager David Dreverman, who released the figures to The Age, said the great river "would have been reduced to a series of pools at bends in the river" if not for the operation of man-made storages in the Murray system. "This is the lowest ever amount over a 12-month period," Mr Dreverman said. "Under normal conditions, if you had inflows that low, the Murray would stop running. But because we have storages in the upper catchment and locks and weirs in the lower river, we can store water."

Mr Dreverman warned that if conditions continued to worsen for another year, the commission might have to suspend water releases from the Hume Dam during summer to minimise evaporation loss. However, this would be done only as a last resort and in a situation where there was no water available for irrigators. "The probability of it happening is low, but it is possible and that's why we are planning for it," Mr Dreverman said.

In November Mr Dreverman told a water summit in Canberra that the probability of inflows into the Murray being as low as they were at the time was more typical of a one-in-1000-year event than one-in-100 years.

EDIT

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/drying-up-murray-on-the-brink/2007/01/03/1167777154122.html