Dealing with salinity in Wheatbelt Valleys - Department of Water

with Salinity in Wheatbelt Valleys Conference
Dealing
Prospects and Practical Options
Processes,
There is still too much “defending a belief” being expressed at the conference, indicating that people have not
absorbed the new knowledge, but rather are justifying past actions.
P.S. Is there any funding/staff/process to continue to build the vision and action after the conference?
• Communication the shared vision to:
a) Government – Premier and Ministers chance and Edwards.
b) Peak existing community based groups (Salinity Council, NRM Regional Groups).
as a clear expression of the conference participation.
• For a clear statement in response from Government, but particularly the community groups, is support of the
shared vision and a commitment to implement it by strategic actions.
Formation or strengthening of catchment groups that involve all landowners and formulate a plan for their catchment.
There is SO MUCH information out there already but people don’t know what’s there.
As a next step we need to make sure this information is available to those who can use it, and that they know how to
access it. For example:
• Environment/landcare “shopfronts” across WA – like catchment centres but better resourced. They don’t need to
be in their own building, they could be a corner of an agency office or shire office.
• A central web resource with links (see salinity.org.au).
• Resources for CLCS as distributors and collectors of information.
• Better sharing of information between agencies and NRM regional groups et al.
• Some kind of central database of contacts and information resources.
We can start this today!!
The shared vision, in my understanding, was about on-farm and/or land holding management of water, it did not
accept that a regional drainage system was part of the shared vision.
A first step should not be towards a regional drainage system but systems for within farm, town, etc usage of water,
which may include internal drainage – settling ponds etc.
Please refer back to Group B’s notes, ‘shared vision’.
Any regional drainage proposal would need to be referred to the EPA and properly assessed, it cannot be ‘fast
tracked’.
A few highly vocal people have repeatedly put a position that has not been shared.
The State Salinity Council have the Minister to survey and check the levels of the ancient river system so that they
may be used for drainage of the valleys.
The first step in the formation of a simple Department to manage and plan and reduce salinity.
All work must be authorised by this Minister within an area to be gazetted covering the wheat belt and from the
Machinery line and the eastern and northern boundaries of the physical catchments of the From, Moore, Avon and
Blackwood rivers.
The M must be vested with the power to do or not do whatever is necessary to progress the Belford Plan.
Once we know what we want to do, we need sources of finance. The community cannot afford to pay. The
Government appears unwilling so we need to tap sources of Corporate Funding. We can help corporations achieve
their goals and they will pay us to do this eg we can create carbon sinks to assist them in meeting their greenhouse
obligations.
The fact that nearly 300 people turned up to this conference is by far the first tangible option of convincing politicians
and the community n general that there is a problem that threatens to lower our standard of living.