Dear Editor,
The front page lead story reporting John Cobb’s current proposal for the Needles Dam won’t hold water as Eco-Structure, even if it eventually holds water as Infrastructure. Ecologically speaking (speaking of what Nature does), it is not possible for people to replace Nature’s Ecostructure with people’s Infrastructure.
Surface water storage in any part of the world, evaporates MORE local water than plants, animals and people use.
As a naturally occurring species we only have one option to retain MORE water in the region where we live and that is to Naturally Hydrate the land and water system as a functional Ecosystem, at our place.
The only way to re-hydrate a drying/dieing Ecosystem is for the Ecosystem to “drink” MORE water from rainfall. Our own body as a natural ecosystem does this also, to satisfy thirst.
As most of our land now in Australia is dysfunctional we need to RE-SOIL our land so that water can infiltrate the surface of the
land to the point where NIL RUNOFF occurs. Increasing soil and water, retained by the land is the function of multiples of species (more than fifty plant and animal species/ hectare) living their own living practices, together as the whole Biological Community. We don’t need MORE perched water stored on the surface of our land; we just need MORE species to put MORE “in ground water”, where evaporation cannot occur. More water in our river systems can only occur if there is MORE water retained in whole of valley river systems that cannot evaporate, slowly moving through the system. Not draining away quickly down “storm water gullies”.
Paul Newell