I  support this situation as being a State of Emergency and there is a dire need for a Royal Commission into the management of water in the MDB and tributaries. My story:

I am a farmer; I live on the Narrung Peninsula, between the shores of the Coorong and Lake Albert. This morning I woke up and heard the ocean behind our property, roaring, and I knew it was a sign of a change of weather, and it was possible that the birds would fly in from the Coorong into Lake Albert for protection. Yesterday, the pelicans were gliding high up in the sky following the thermals spiralling higher and higher, what a lovely sight.

  (Acid-sulphate decay, Lake Albert: Image courtesy L. Fischer)

I spent the afternoon riding around the lake bed of Lake Albert, just watching in amazement the abundance of bird life feeding frantically as the lake recedes (while I was watching, the lake receded around 200 meters, blown by our strong southerly winds straight off the Antarctic).
One can only sit and watch in wonder as the pelicans, swans, cape barren geese stood majestically along the shores or hundreds of meters out in the water, just watching as I drove past (I say standing, because the water is so shallow that the birds can only stand).

To the passer by, there appears to be a lot of water. It is not until you do what I do, and venture out into the lake bed that you get a true picture of what is happening. On the lake bed there is masses of revegetation. At one point I was about 1 km out in the lake bed with vegetation around me, Mother Nature at her best repairing the damage as fast as she can. Little birds, plovers, darting frenetically between the undergrowth, the mothers falling down and pretending to be injured, just to try and divert my interest away from their tiny off spring: a truly wonderful sight; the other adult birds running in all directions again to divert my attention from the young.

I found a live turtle heading back to shore, maybe to lay eggs...maybe another generation. It appeared healthy, so I decided to leave it there. I have heaps of dead turtles that did not survive last summer. There were small holes in the lake bed; something must be living in there. But all the fresh water mussels appear to have died. There are kangaroo tracks around the lake. Hundreds of bird foot prints of all sizes.

I found what I think might be calcified tree stumps, but am not sure. The lake bed changes every time I go out there, the landscape is different each time. Where are the experts who can tell me about what I am seeing? I find the rotted shoots of the reeds that used to abound the lake maybe 100s years or more ago. This is environmental history, who can tell me about this history?
And then there is the acid sulphate in small areas, the soil is bright yellow with a crumbly crust, but only about 1/2 an inch thick. I wonder if we can save these areas, there is vegetation all around this acid and some shoots trying to survive. The smell is foul.

Where are the scientists, why aren't they swarming around the lake to try and save what we can while we can? I wish you could all come and see and appreciate what I have just described, and then you will all understand why I believe these lakes and Coorong are too important to lose. After all they are recognised for their unique wetland significance as an international RAMSAR site.

My family were irrigators, taking water from Lake Albert, we utilised only 80% of our entitlement, the other 20% we considered was our contribution back to the environment. We on Lake Albert, used the worst water in the whole system, the water everyone else had used and no one else wanted to use, yet we all farmed well with that water. We had our own weather station we computerised our irrigation practices, accounting for nearly every drop of water.

Why have we been sacrificed? Why is our environment being sacrificed?

What right have we to put our major water ways at risk. With corporate ownership, some being international, Australians need to ask, who will own Australia's water at the end of the day?

Without an environment, we have nothing. Everything revolves around a healthy ecosystem.

Without water we are nothing.

Regards, Lesley Fischer, Meningie