Water

More than 200 people are set to tour north-western New South Wales to bear witness to some of the state’s driest rivers and bring back solutions for the water crisis affecting local communities. The tour has been organised by Muruwari and Budjiti man Bruce Shillingsworth who spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Rachel Evans about its purpose and aims.

In spite of Adani Australia CEO Lucas Dow’s claim last year that the corporate energy giant did not require a cent, the company looks set to sign off on a secret royalty deal with the Queensland government.

Adani will receive a $900-million-seven-year low interest royalty capital subsidy on September 30. This will mean Queensland will not receive a royalty return from Adani’s mine for years.

A global day of action on September 14 drew attention to the Turkish government’s controversial Ilisu dam project on the Tigris River in Turkish Kurdistan. The dam is already being filled and if completed would flood the 12,000-year-old town of Hasankeyf, 199 villages and 136km of the Tigris River valley.

Nature conservation groups have criticised the NSW Coalition government’s $10 million plan to remove threatened fish species from the Darling River in the state's south-west, following the disastrous fish kill last summer.

The Broken Hill water pipeline has been exposed as a vital element in a plan to sacrifice the Lower Darling and Murray rivers to the interests of corporate irrigators and the mining industry, writes Elena Garcia.

“I believe the numbers will change the game,” said First Nations activist and artist Uncle Bruce Shillingsworth in an interview with Green Left Weekly about the global climate emergency and the water crisis in the Murray-Darling river system.

During a recent visit to the far-western NSW city of Broken Hill, Jim McIlroy and Coral Wynter travelled to Menindee and spoke to people involved in the struggle to save the Darling (Baaka) River and Menindee Lakes, now mostly an empty, barren depression in the surrounding plain, dotted with the skeletons of dead trees.

A protest outside New South Wales Parliament on July 10 demanded the state government take real action to combat the dire situation facing the Murray-Darling river system.

In many regions of the world, water is becoming a scarce commodity that is bought, sold and fought over.

The Environment Defenders Office Queensland (EDO QLD) announced on June 12 that in a huge win for its client the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), the federal government has conceded the case brought against it over Adani’s North Galilee Water Scheme — the plan to pump up to 12.5 billion litres of water a year from the Suttor River to Adani’s Carmichael mine site.

On May 26, journalists from the Real News Network (RNN) interviewed residents and local representatives from the barrios in Caracas about the impact of US sanctions on critical water supplies.

A WaterNSW submission to the ongoing Independent Expert Panel into Mining in Sydney’s Catchment has highlighted the destructive impact coal mining is having on the Sydney Water Catchment Area.

It called for curbs on two big coal mines in Sydney's catchment, saying millions of litres of water are being lost daily and environmental impacts are likely breaching approval conditions.