Irrigation Fundamentals

27.10.09

Irrigation Fundamentals

§ Buying irrigation licenses by the Federal Government will do nothing for our rivers, it will only limit agricultural production when water is plentiful.
§ Irrigation licenses grant the right to extract water only when allocations are made.
§ When water is short there are no, or very limited allocations.
§ Our rainfall (and run-off) is highly variable.
§ The answer to water shortages is to store more in times of plenty.
§ Storages need to be deep to minimise evaporation losses.
§ Valleys, in hilly country, make the most efficient storages.
§ Diversion of surplus flows from coastal flowing rivers through damming and tunnelling, would not only mitigate floods, but also provide additional water for food production.
§ Dams need to be engineered so as to allow smaller flows to pass.
§ They need to be “adaptively” managed in a flexible way, in line with our highly variable rainfall

David Boyd