Water Watch Radio Water Watch Radio

This week 30 pelicans have been found dead or dying at Lake Menindee, is this another event in the ongoing water quality crisis or a simply and example of healthy bird out competing the counterparts? 

We speak to river ecologist and conservation biologist Professor Richard Kingsford from the University of Queensland for insight on this problem. 

And later in the program we hear from Dr Kate Harriden, Wiradjuri woman and Research Fellow in Indigenous water at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute on incorporating Indigenous ways of being in water management. 

If you see further pelican deaths, contact the EPA on 131 555 or the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline on 1800 675 888

 
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This week we continue the stories of Country and Culture from Ngaratya, the exhibition on display at the broken Hill City Art Gallery with a dip into the Water Watch Archive to share interview with Barkindji Malyangapa artist David Doyle & a special live recording of Leroy Johnson and the Waterbag band. 

Check out the exhibition at:

https://www.ngaratya.com.au/
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This week on water watch we speak with Zena Cumpston, artist and co-curator of the contemporary art exhibition Ngaratya (together, us group, all in it together) that opened at the Broken Hill City Art Gallery last week.

The exhibition brings together six Barkandji/Barkindji artists including Nici Cumpston, Zena Cumpston, David Doyle, Kent Morris, Adrianne Semmens and Raymond Zada. with works inspired by Barkandji/Barkindji Country, as a Mother and active participant in the project.

View the works online at https://www.ngaratya.com.au/

Hosted by Krystle Evans and Megan Williams
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Last week, the anticipated interim report from the NSW Connectivity Expert Panel was published with a stirring response from irrigators and environmentalists alike. 

If you listened to our episode last week, you’d know that we had the opportunity to sit down with the NSW Minister for Water Rose Jackson about the Wilcannia Weir replacement project, but we also spoke to her about this report. 

The connectivity expert panel was born out of a recommendation from the NSW Office of the Chief Scientist and Engineers Report into the 2023 Menindee Mass Fish kills, as well as departmental obligations to re-make the Barwon Darling Water Sharing plan by June 2025. 

In this episode we cover the big picture analysis of this report and responses to it.
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We had the privilege this week of sitting down with NSW Water Minister Rose Jackson to talk through a number of state water management issues.

And it has been a really big week of announcements with the much-awaited release of the Connectivity Expert Panel’s interim report which assesses the rules in all northern Basin water sharing plans… this report was born from last year's mass fish deaths at Menindee and it aims to bring the rules for upstream extraction back to a sustainable level. 

But we are going to save that big topic for next week… instead we are going to follow up with our promise to take questions to the NSW Water Minister Rose Jackson about the Wilcannia Wier replacement project.

We also hear from Midura City Councilllor Jason Modica who is the chair of region 4 of the Murray Daring Association. He’ll be discussing the upcoming Basin Forum which will be held in Mildura next week. 
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A new water quality monitoring project was launched in Menindee last week called Ngarratja Warrkina, which means ‘All Working Together’ in the Barkindji language. This project is a collaboration between the Barkindji Native Title Group, The NSW Environmental Protection Authority and the Department of Climate Change Energy Environment and Water.

The program will provide training for Barkindji River Rangers to monitor the water quality in the Baaka, and provide sampling data as well as on the ground observations to better inform the department and the EPA about what's going with the water quality in the Baaka. This program emerges from the terrible fish kills in the Baaka 13 months ago and the last few years of shocking water quality in the Baaka, a crisis which is still ongoing with blue-green algal red alerts popping up across the lake system. 

We went down to Menindee last week to the launch of the program, and I had the privilege of speaking with the program's participants.
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