Australia's Wimmera River - Key To Victoria Grain - Nearly Out Of Water

[hatrack]

THE nightmare has arrived. After the driest June in 148 years, the Wimmera — Victoria's bread basket — is almost out of water. A devastating change to the long-term weather pattern that has wrought 10 years of drought has meant winter rains have failed again so far this year.

The impact on the region's estimated $2 billion agricultural economy, and the follow-on effect on the state's coffers, is expected to be huge.

The big dry has swallowed the contents of the reservoir system around the Grampians, leaving it with just 6.4 per cent of capacity — only 48,000 megalitres out of 750,000. It is nowhere near enough to enable the nation's pre-eminent granary to sustain full production in the next two years.

For the first time, the winter release of reservoir water into the 11,000 kilometres of channels feeding farm dams has been cancelled. Unless there is heavy rain and inflow to catchments before August 1, farmers will get no water for their 20,000 dams this year.

EDIT

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/states-granary-runs-dry/2006/07/08/1152240539888.html

Good thing they didn't institute any of those horribly costly climate measures, isn't it?

:eyes:

[LeftCoast]

1. As climate change accelerates we will see this story many more times

repeated around the world. It's nice that people here finally seem to be waking up but it will be too late to prevent the massive disruptions that are coming.