Water in Focus - The Riverlands of south australia

摘要

The Murray River flows some 2530 kilometres from the Victorian Highlands along the NSW / Victorian border and into South Australia, where it completes the last 640km of its journey and supplies close to 1.2 million South Australians with water. The Riverlands of eastern South Australia comprise over 20,000 hectares of irrigated farmland, approximately ll,000ha of which is planted to wine grapes and a little over 7,000ha to citrus; the remainder is made up of stone fruit, nuts and other smaller crops.There are no water storages in South Australia, yet each year Riverland farms source approximately 400 gigalitres of irrigation water from the Murray River. This water is distributed via piped systems controlled by licensed irrigation trusts and private diverters under licenses allocated by the South Australian Department for Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation (DWLBC).