Flood's bitter harvest

January 26, 2008

Fish died in their millions on the Richmond - again - and farming practices are to blame, writes Ben Cubby.

No one had ever seen so many dead fish. "You looked all along the bank of the river and it was just white with fish," said Dallas Johnson, a commercial fisherman at Ballina on the North Coast.

"Then you saw that it was all white underwater too. It's mind-blowing the [number] of fish that got killed."

The Richmond River, winding through some of the state's richest farm land and joining the sea just south of Byron Bay, with its pristine marine park, was the scene of a huge number of fish deaths earlier this month.

Millions of fish of all types, and hundreds of thousands of prawns, oysters, eels, sharks and stingrays, have simply been obliterated from the Richmond River ecosystem, leaving the river almost without life.

In one representative 500-metre stretch of river, wildlife officers estimated that there were 88,000 dead fish longer than five centimetres mouldering on the bank. There were several times as many smaller fish in the same area.

The causes are complex, but there is no doubt that human activity is responsible. When heavy rains inundated pastures along the Richmond River floodplain they triggered a chain of events made inevitable by intensive agriculture that has radically changed the topography and plant mix across the region in the last century.

Soaked and rotting non-native plants, unable to resist the flood, were swept into the Richmond through an ingenious system of drainage ditches that have allowed generations of farmers to turn what was once swamp into productive grazing land. Between January 7 and 10, tonnes of vegetation decomposed in the river, stripping it of oxygen. Unable to breathe, and with nowhere else to go, the fish died.

And now Ballina faces his its own fight for oxygen as the disaster hits local economically. The Department of Primary Industries closed the river to all fishing for two months - it had little choice - and many believe the fishing ban will be extended.

Commercial fisherman along the affected stretch of the Richmond have been left with little but boats and unpaid bills, while the township of Ballina, heavily dependent on summer tourism, is facing a grim autumn as caravan parks sit empty and shops lay off staff. One bait shop has already closed.

Most heartbreaking of all, it has all happened before. In 2001 most of the river's fish were exterminated in exactly the same way - by de-oxygenated water after a flood run-off from farming land. "I'm now unemployed. All the fishermen are unemployed, so it's not too hard to see how this is going to affect the town," said Garry Joblin, the chairman of the Ballina Fishermen's Co-operative.

"Plus," he added, "you're not going to see people wanting to come to the town when there is the smell of rotting fish all over the place. Recovery was hard enough after 2001, so who knows what will happen now. This is much bigger than the fish kill in 2001."

Joblin pins his hopes on a meeting with the Minister for Primary Industries, Ian Macdonald, on Tuesday, in which he hopes to secure some payment for commercial fishers as assistants and guides in survey work to take place along the river. "I'm very confident that that can happen, just to get them a bit of something to keep them going," he said.

Farmers are angry because they feel they are being blamed for following some of the same practices that have kept the area productive for generations. In some areas, improvements to drainage had been made in an attempt to ward off disaster, though this month's disaster showed their shortcomings in devastating fashion.

Jock Laurie, the president of the NSW Farmers Association, reacted fiercely to assertions that agriculture is at fault.

"It's bloody frustrating that everyone starts blaming the industry without taking into account all the good work that has been going on there for years," he said. Farmers along the Richmond had been working with groups such as Landcare to attempt to flood-proof land along the river, Laurie said.

"We don't dispute the causes of this particular fish kill, but what it does show is that we need to continue our work to manage the land there. The reality is that things like this are going to continue to happen whatever we do if you get [weather] events like this."

But a thorough study undertaken by scientists from nearby Southern Cross University and the NSW Department of Primary Industries after the catastrophic kill in 2001 pointed to agricultural practices as a leading cause, including the large-scale draining of swamps to provide more arable land.

The event "most likely resulted from the death of pasture grasses inundated by floods, which removes oxygen from the water, and the rapid drainage of this floodplain water into the river," the report said.

"Acid sulfate soil-derived drainage sediments were also a likely contributor of low dissolved oxygen in the water."

The whole hydrology of the floodplain had gradually been changed by farming, the report said, leading to more and deeper drainage ditches and rashes of weeds, such as lantana, along the river banks, field boundaries and surrounding creeks. Acidic ooze gathering along the bottom of deep ditches, which was washed into the river after heavy rains, also contributed to the disaster.

The report recommended the replacement of non-native grazing grass with native grasses that have evolved to withstand floods; shallower drainage channels, and regular opening of floodgates to flush out the ooze. Some recommendations have been implemented, but often in an ad-hoc way, some of those on the ground say.

"The department's own scientists say this is a problem caused by agricultural land," said Matt Landos, of the Aquatic Animal Health Chapter of the Australian College of Veterinary Scientists. "They really need to act now, but the strength of the farming lobby has been preventing that from going ahead."

Landos said that while some farming branches, such as the sugar cane industry, had done a lot of work to rectify the damage caused by flood run-offs, the problem needed NSW Government leadership.

Some pastures were unsuitable for farming and should be bought out, he said.

"Today's farmers have been left with a legacy that is very difficult to manage, based on generations that have gone before. So they are justifiably very defensive."

OceanWatch Australia, a non-profit organisation that promotes a sustainable seafood industry, believes the fish kill could have been prevented if more action had been taken after the 2001 kill. "It's not the first time it has happened, and it could happen again," said the chief executive officer of OceanWatch, Anissa Lawrence.

"The government needs to get serious about this. It needs a serious, long-term investment to make the whole area sustainable. It can be fixed up, but what we don't want to see is a situation where the Government just buys out the commercial fishing industry."

The Department of Primary Industry said more than $1 million had been spent to correct water problems on the floodplain in the past five years and implement the recommendations of its report after the 2001 kill.

The Minister for Primary Industries, Ian Macdonald, said in a statement: "DPI continues to work with landholders to improve land management practices using the best available science, and work with land managers to encourage the adoption of best practices for improved water quality."

Forty floodgate systems had been retrofitted so that they could be opened in non-flood periods to improve water quality, and drainage had been modified to provide for waterbird habitat as well as improve water quality, Macdonald said. He encouraged local fishers to apply for loans from the rural assistance authority where possible.

"NSW DPI is working with the Richmond Floodplain Committee, involving commercial and recreational fishers, farmers, local government and other agencies to map out a strategy for the future."

Bruce Thurlow, a spokesman for EcoFish, a recreational fishing lobby group, said fishers in the region were willing to donate $30,000 from their licence fees to improve more of the drum gates that control water flow from some of the key drainage ditches near the river.

"We're trying to do what we can, but it is going to need massive funds from the government level to sort this out properly once and for all," Thurlow said.

In the meantime, commercial fishermen like Dallas Johnson are casting around for a way to feed their families. The best estimate is that a year will pass before fish stocks will begin to reach levels that allow for sustainable harvesting, but no one knows for sure.

"Right now, we're just having to survive as best we can," he said. "My wife has a job but it's only a few hours a week. It's going to be extremely difficult. It gets annoying because this shouldn't be occurring. Man created this, and we can stop it."

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