Aims and Objectives

More than 10 years of drain digging has continued without any independent review of the impacts of the Upper South East Project (the Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Plan) and it is about time - long overdue we would say - that a whole of landscape review of the impacts, positive and negative, of this pathfinder, nationally significant project was undertaken.

The immediate aim of the stop the drains coalition was to draw a line in the sand at the boundary of Dean and Susan Prosser's best practice agricultural and conservation property, Kyeema, to stop the excavators from digging any further, to stand for environmental integrity and accountability, and to call for "a balanced and thorough, independent, whole of landscape, environment audit covering the entire Upper South East Project area before any further drain digging is undertaken".

Our aims have struck a chord with the majority of landholders in the region. Expressions of support have come from the total cross-section of the Upper South East community, as well as conservationists, hydrologists, soil scientists, and landholders.

Stop the Drains coalition requires on-ground honesty, demands accountability and is willing to submit to all the requirements of open and public scrutiny, and is opposed to a persistent and dominant deep drain culture of the Upper South East Program Board and its selective misuse of scientific reports and bureaucratic authority for its own purposes.

This deep drain culture has been backed by the Upper South East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Act 2002 - the most draconian, anti-democratic environmental Act in South Australian, if not Australian, history.

The Act, and the selective misinformation by Government officials enforcing it, have caused major divisions in the community. The deep drain culture of the Upper South East Program Board and its officials hide behind exaggerated claims, flawed or the selective use of science, while preferring to compromise community members by using them to press their case for deep drains.

Drain or not to Drain

The stop the drains coalition does not believe that a range of drains are inappropriate in the Upper South East of SA. Indeed, we consider that the Upper South East is fortunate in being able to use drains as one of the management options to address the deleterious impacts of inundation and salinity (activated salt).

In the wheatbelt of Western Australia, for example, 3 million hectares has been lost to rising groundwater and activated salt. It will take a concerted and heroic effort to stop the momentum of loss at 4 million hectares. Crops use rainfall almost entirely in the spring. In Western Australia unused winter, summer or autumn rainfall leaks into the ground causing the watertable to rise each year since clearing. Inevitably, the groundwater rises to the surface and capillary action and evaporation activates the salt that has lain dormant at the bottom of the groundwater. The salt rises and salinity contaminates and kills the "valley floors". Because of the landlocked valley floors between the hills, the terrain offers little or no opportunity for drainage.

The consideration in the Upper South East Project is how best to use surface water drainage as one of a number of strategies to enhance the long-term health of the region. But drainage, of itself, addresses the symptoms of the problem and does little or nothing to address the causes.

Wherever possible, the guiding principles are to use rain where it falls and to seek environmental solutions, such as the increased use of perennial plants, to environment problems. Engineering solutions should be minimized or avoided wherever possible because of their destructive environmental impacts, high capital and maintenance costs, as well as unwanted and unpredictable side effects.

An optimum, balanced solution comprises a mix of drain designs (avoiding deep drains wherever possible), together with revegetation and soil management strategies. Sustainability should aim to maximize the short-term and the long-term economic and environmental benefits while minimising costs. Landholders of the Upper South East will have to pay for the operation and maintenance of 650kms of drains when they are completed, so it is in their interest that costs are kept low.