DEBATE has raged for years about the importance of the barrages to the health of the River Murray, but speakers at the Murray Darling Association national conference agreed they were crucial to the river system.
Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources River Murray operations director Andrew Beal said an important function of the barrages was to maintain the pool level above the barrages up to Blanchetown, and having that elevated pool facilitated production for a range of purposes.
Mr Beal said removing the barrages would have implications for the river’s health.
“Rivers die from the bottom up and there’s plenty of experience of that from throughout the world,” he said.
“All river management is about trade-offs, and nobody gets exactly what they want.
“There’s an old saying that the only thing we learn from history, is that we never learn from history, but I think the basin plan is the exception to that.”
Murray-Darling Basin Authority river management executive director Andrew Reynolds said the basin plan would need to be looked at again in the future, to adapt to climate change, but at the moment it was important all stakeholders worked with the plan in front of them.