Australia’s insane plan to green the Outback

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As an Australian. I'm willing to bet everything that this will never happen.

Our current incumbent government here in Australia is not known for its intelligence

Dear Australia. If you guys figure out how to get sufficient water in the interior without wrecking the environment, lets us know in US how it is done so we can do the same for the southwest. If we figure it out first, I promise we will share the info!

As an Aussie this is news to me , we are constantly in drought conditions and I don’t ever see this happening

Everyone else: "we measure in hectares" Caspian report: "we measure in Ukraines and Czech Republics"

As an Aussie, we can't manage water flow already in the outback. Farmers growing cotton in the desert (a water hungry crop) draw too much water from the Murray already, to the point it stops flowing properly and massive fish die offs occur frequently. A plan to Irrigate the interior would be abused before the water ever reached there, much like what we currently have.

You should look into "Keyline Design" developed by the Australian farmer P.A. Yeoman. The idea is to slow down the water flow from precipitation down a terrain, locally, by making it follow the contour lines. One way to do this cost- and space-efficiently is to have farm roads be placed on the lower side of the contour, effectively making the road's upper ditch act as the "dam"/river of incomming watee. The water then travels parallel to the contour, gradually departing from it to the next, lower contour. This can all be adapted to the specific context of the system in question, but has huge potential to locally maximize water-capture following the rare rain-periods.

As an Aussie , this would be way to smart, beneficial and awesome for our government to comprehend ,let alone do!💯

The real problem in Australia is the salt which rises from the water table beneath the ground when you remove deep rooted trees/water it too much. There are 1000 good ideas to water Australia, but you’ll get nowhere until you you fix the salt problem! I like to think about this from time to time and hope I can get funding for a few ideas when I finish study.

As an Australian, I lived in Longreach, western Queensland for some time and it didn't matter what you tried to grow, the soil was so poor and low in nutrients you had to build up the soil in your garden through compost and mulch to get anything to grow and thrive. I think a lot of the area mentioned is very poor for growing things...adding lots of fertiliser is not the answer.

One thing to remember is that the region around Lake Eyre is extremely salty, it's an old sea bottom after all. I've always thought an easier way to restore the ancient sea would be a pipeline through South Australia. Lake Eyre is around 150 feet below sea level so a pipeline from 50 feet underwater in South Australia would simply drain sea water into the Lake. It would literally syphon the water. The inland sea would expand until evaporation matched the water coming in through the pipe. It's cheaper and if it's a mistake, easy to rectify. Put a hole in the pipeline and the syphoning stops and the sea would shrink back to current levels.

This seemed a well researched piece. I grew up in Australia in the 60's as the Snowy sheme came to fruition and as the decades passed there appeared significant environmental damage as a result of changes in the direction of water flow and intensification of agriculture along the Murray River. I went to UNE where there was an Ag Science department and I recall students discussing many of the issues covered in the report. Time and again, the mention of the poor nutrient content of the soil was mentioned. History also records that widespread pastoral activity took place across the state of NSW beyond the Darling River in the late 19th/early 20th century. The grazing livestock degraded the land to such an extent that grazing activities ceased and the land became marginal at best. The Australian environment is fragile and European settlement has brought largescale changes and damage to it. If nothing else, the good intentions of past schemes has been a demonstration of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Heres how smart the government is. They keep zoning our best agricultural land for residential developement.

As a hydrologist, I always advise caution about terraforming. The amount of fresh water needed for such feats are gargantuan, beyond what can be visualized by common sense. I’m convinced that, no matter how much it seems to rain on the coast, it’s still far short of what’s needed to “green a desert” If successful, the most likely outcome is irrigated agriculture, increasing food security and plus an economic boost for Australia. Job creation will be minimal, given you will want to maximize yields through mecanization. The cost however is less water available for the costal cities (increasing reliance on desalination), plus an almost certain collapse of coastal ecosystem (due to decrease of freshwater inflow), taking a toll on fisheries and tourism.

Here's a thought. If the cities in S/E Queensland treat an average of 1GL of sewage per day! only to dump it in the ocean, why not invest in a pipeline powered by renewable energy to push the treated water over the great dividing range and let it flow down river from there. 1,000,000,000L a day is a ton of fresh water to wave farewell to the ocean. It could recharge the rivers and give water to agriculture.

The ord river system is a perfect example of how agriculture can be achieved in the outback. Lake Argyle is also impressive, as a man made lake created in the 70’s it now holds one third of all Australia’s bird species. So the environmental impacts might not be all terrible? I don’t know a whole heap about the environmental impacts though, I just know that marine and bird life flourish at Lake Argyle.

Me: let's watch something unrelated to Ukraine for a change Shrivan: "An area 3 times the size of Ukraine"

"Why we don't build an inland sea in Australia? Because of the Lizards..." -the Internet historian

"The government has a plan, it's practically guaranteed to work" - Noone ever.