Water flowing into Lake Menindee on Sunday. Video: Graeme McCrabb
AS Graeme McCrabb stood filming water flowing through the Menindee inlet on Sunday, his voice was almost drowned out by the water gushing over the concrete structure.
The Menindee resident pointed his camera phone at the brown-grey water spilling into the lake, then spun around, zooming in to point out water in the channels winding through the wide, flat landscape.
“Looks promising for water into Lake Menindee,” he said, tentative excitement in his voice.
The place where he was standing was the gate that stops water from the top two lakes in the chain of water bodies in Menindee — Lake Pamamaroo and Lake Wetherell — from travelling into the lower two lakes — Lake Menindee and Lake Cawndilla.
The last time any significant amount of water had flowed through those gates was in 2016, and Mr McCrabb had been losing hope that the Lake would get another decent flow.
“If you’d said six weeks ago that you’re gonna have water going into Lake Menindee I would have laughed,” he said.
“It’s a bit like rain in a drought… When it’s been a long time since it’s happened you think that it feels like it’s never going to happen.”
Locals in Menindee and along the Darling-Barka River have been watching closely as widespread rainfall from southern Queensland and northern NSW has travelled down Darling River tributaries in recent weeks.
It was only because Mr McCrabb happened to be “floating around” on Sunday that he saw authorities had “taken the seal off the gates”, he said.
There is no official confirmation at this stage, he said, but “it looks like they’re preparing to put water into Lake Menindee.”
Water minister Melinda Pavey has remained tight lipped on whether Lake Menindee will fill. She told The Land last week “the size of the inflows will ultimately decide whether water is diverted into Lake Menindee or passed through the lakes system to count towards NSW Murray general security allocations”.
On the Murray Darling Basin Authority website, the graph showing water volume in the lake system has been climbing steeply over the last week, from 303 gigalitres on April 7 to 353 gigalitres on April 18.
Mr McCrabb estimates there is at least another 400 gigalitres coming.
The Lakes are controlled by the NSW Government, but a clause in the water management terms means control of the lake system will shift to the multi-state Murray Darling Basin Authority if they fill to more than 640 gigalitres of water.
The main two lakes used for water storage at Menindee — Lake Wetherell and Lake Pamamaroo — take up to 500 gigalitres capacity. Above that capacity, the NSW Government will either fill up Lake Menindee, or send the water down to Lake Victoria in South Australia.
Indications that the seals have opened to Lake Menindee mean control of the lakes could shift to the Murray Darling Basin Authority, Mr McCrabb said.
According to water management terms, that control would then shift back to NSW when water volumes at the lakes drop back to 480 gigalitres.
Menindee residents are anxious to ensure when this happens, the 480 gigalitres is calculated only from Lake Wetherell and Lake Pamamaroo, and doesn’t include any “residual water” in Lake Menindee, Mr McCrabb said.
Lake Menindee was once a permanent lake where residents of the remote township could go fishing and swimming just minutes from the centre of town.
Since it was drained in 2004 it has only filled a handful of times, which has had a big impact on the community, Barkindji woman Cindy Bates said.
Ms Bates said she and the community will be “happy for a while” if the lake fills, but she is concerned about how long it will stay.
Barkindji people “received native title over a decade ago and now have a river with no flowing water,” chair of peak advocacy group Southern Riverina Irrigators (SRI), Chris Brooks said.
The water headed for Lake Menindee was something to celebrate.
“The fact water has even been able to find its way into the lakes, despite a 142 per cent increase in storages in the north to 1395 gigalitres over the last 26 years is certainly worth celebrating, ” Mr Brooks said.
For now, watching Lake Menindee slowly fill felt “pretty exciting”, Mr McCrabb said.
“There’s a fair bit of water there… If you look real hard… you can actually see the water starting to build up in the channels.”
