Australian Water Wars 2019: how NSW rivers were running on 22 January

The news cycle is such that even the dire straits the Murray Darling Basin finds itself in, with regard to environmental, cultural and township water flow security, is already fading into the background.

If we let it do so then it will be business as usual for the Federal, Queensland, New South Wales, Victorian and South Australian governments and, it is business as usual which is causing an ecological crisis in Basin waterways.

This is a snapshot of an interactive map supplied by NSW Water showing river flows on Tuesday 22 January 2019.

Every red marker against a river or section of river indicates that at that point the flow was less than 20 per cent of the natural flow.

You will note that even the coastal rivers of Northern NSW are running at less than 20 per cent of their natural flow.

Along the length of the Darling/Barka River many points like Brewarrina, Bourke and Wilcannia recorded zero natural flow passing on 22 January.

This was also a day when land surface temperatures were still uncomfortably high, with parts of the Murray-Darling Basin predicted to reach temperatures of 42-45+ Celsius.

Remind your local MP that they still need to stand up and be counted when it comes to legislating measures to mitigate climate change and need to be persistent in demanding their political parties bite the bullet on water management reform.