Water Storages and Efficiency

The South Australian based organisation "LakesNeedWater" have a clearly expressed introduction on their website which bears repeating:

"LAKES NEED WATER AND RIVERS NEED ESTUARIES

Since we started LakesNeedWater over one year ago, our core message has consistently been that the Lower Lakes should have, well, water. This is hardly rocket science after all. Why anyone would believe that holding back seawater and allowing the lakes to dry out is preferable to allowing seawater to mix with freshwater defies logic. Among the great rivers of the world, such as the Nile, the Amazon, the Yangtze, and the Mississippi, the River Murray is alone in being cut off from its mouth. Does anyone honestly believe it is healthy for a river to be separated from the ocean by kilometres of barrages, resulting in the loss of 90% of its historic estuary?

The scaremongers have it all wrong with their single-minded obsession with fresh water in the Lower Lakes. The River Murray needs a healthy estuary, not artificially maintained freshwater lakes. Rivers need estuaries. It really is that simple."