the menindee lakes are located on the darling barca river as it winds its way through western new south wales it is a series of large lakes that fill when the darling barker river floods but the menindee lakes are under threat when you're physically standing there in a dry riverbed and you can see just a series of puddles in what should be a great mighty river it strikes at the very heart of what it's like to be a human being living with nature i hate standing on the middle of the dry darling river it's it's a really scary thing it actually brings me to tears those who are left here on the darling river it's taken our soul 1500 kilometers of dry riverbed totally man-made disaster this has nothing to do with drought it's all about corruption of the river system over extraction and destroying the integrity of the menindee lakes we will lose a lot of our cultural heritage and a lot of our cultural practices without the river and lakes we need the water out in the system over the last six years our river has stopped running every year and every year we're going forward our river runs less this year the river ran for four weeks last year around for six weeks we've been on the river all our life and this is unheard of we have to let the darling river flow and that means not taking as much water upstream and just let it come down there's no high flows at all coming down and if they do come down they tend to take them off before they get here it's not sustainable this river can't be expected to sustain an ever-increasing withdrawal of water there's too many straws in the glass that means that upstream too much water is being taken out we're not living within our moons when it comes to water along the darling river a 4 000 increase in cotton on the catchment since 1974 taking water in flood irrigation are you insane their over-allocation is is the problem in a nutshell over the last decade when the menindee lakes have filled they have been rapidly emptied by authorities started because of the stupid management of the menindee lake scheme and the rapid draining of them three times for no apparent reason the menini lakes are four times bigger than sydney harbour eight years supply of water even if they don't get recharged but they will let go twice in four years 16 years supply of water gone and we still haven't been able to get a true answer about why the lakes were drained when they were they want these lakes dry so they could justify the pipeline to broken hill once they disconnected broken hill from the menindee lake scheme they could then ensure that the water that's normally stored in the lake scheme could be used for the irrigators up north broken hill has been disconnected from the menindee lake system and is now running water through a pipe from the murray river all the way 270 kilometers up to broken hill now the government plans to cut off the menini lakes from the darling barca river the only way they want to restructure the menindee lakes is to leave far less water in them and when there is a bit of water in them to drain them down a lot quicker and the only reason they're doing that is so that the water can be used up north for greedy irrigators they have plans to reconfigure the lakes with engineering projects one option is to cut off lake corndilla from the other lakes even though it is important bird and fish habitat and sits in kinchigan national park our second proposal is to enlarge drainage channels to drain water from the lakes faster and more make them thoroughly and wider so i can flush all the water straight down the bar another proposal is to reduce the size of lakes with artificial levees again this will reduce habitat for birds fish and other animals so it'd be like a moat so the inside of the lake the massive would be dry except for floods those two big lakes are the heart and soul of the system and and beyond the system it's always going to be lost and that that is massive that'd be the biggest ecological disaster in our history other proposals are to store water in the top lakes rather than all the lakes and to enlarge bypass channels if you decouple the lakes from either the other lakes or from the river there is potential to do great harm not only to what we see on the surface but also to the aquifer this is a plan to as the new south wales government had said we think nature's inefficient we think that killing potentially upwards of about a hundred million fish is acceptable because the manila lakes aren't efficient water use it evaporates well yes it's called nature evaporation does take place but you need nature this will have a major impact on fish throughout the murray darling river system the lower darling in particular has been identified as being the major nursery for all of our native fish species all of them spend some time on their life cycle in the lower darling and then migrate back into all the other rivers so we're talking about a major threat to all of the native fish species in across the basin when you see cod that were over 100 years old dying you know it's not just due to drought they've survived droughts before whether it's because there was the menindee lake system there but we know that it's an important breeding area to to repopulate the river system and it was effectively the nursery of the golden perch perch and cod 80 of the golden perch came out of the lakes whilst the lakes are dry and the fish can't breed and if this continues for very long 85 percent of the fish in the murray river will not be in existence because they breed and go back down the river to the murray now it's the same with the bird life this area here is the kakadu of the west and there's over 210 species of birds living this district and when the lakes are dry there is virtually non-existent bird life there's no bird breeding at all i mean ladies and gentlemen they're the greatest wetlands south of kakadu more bird species come to the menindee lakes from around the world than they do to kakadu this is an amazing environment cutting off the menindee lakes and the lack of water flows down the darling baka river is destroying outback communities and jobs in these regions orchard is dying because there's no water left in the river this farm was providing export income for australia was providing jobs it was providing a lifeblood to this community and now it's all gone because we failed to manage water properly in this state towns like menindee have been decimated you know there was 800 people down there in peak picking seasons there's none now there's nothing happening there these these towns these towns have just died because there's no water benindia used to be like a hub of employment out here but now our young ones get a move on country you know to build families to have an encounter i think it's having a devastating impact on us and and the communities that run along the river with no water there's there's not a lot of life left well you can kiss this whole river and um inland of australia goodbye i mean you got now already because of this situation the population when india is reported to have halved that will continue right throughout this side the state and the productivity of this end of the state will benon-existent i'd love to see the menindee lakes protected as they should be and have a permanent water supply and allow nature to recover look at the end of the day we're on the cusp of watching the river systems collapse and if we do not make massive change now then we all walk away it isn't doom and gloom if we make tangible change now but it's got to be tangible it's got to be genuine you