00:00Yes, I got notified by a resident out at Sunset Strip on Monday night, so I came out for a look
00:08then. So I think it's easier 100,000. I walked about a kilometre that night and there was probably
00:1280 to 100,000 that first kilometre. And I think we'd be looking at probably two and a half to
00:17three kilometres of dead fish. Wow. And what was it like for you walking along and seeing this?
00:23Yeah, it's not great and the smell's probably, you know, it's been pretty hot out here,
00:26so the smell's not real friendly either. So concerning as well, I suppose, some question
00:31marks around how they died on Monday night. So that always leaves you wondering whether
00:35you're going to have more kills in the following days.
00:38Yeah, and this has happened before. You're kind of used to this, unfortunately.
00:43Yeah, I guess we'd look at it in India, a few hundred thousand fish is a small kill. When
00:47you look at 23, I think it was 25 million and there's several million back in 18-19. So
00:52yeah, certainly. And I suppose one part of this is they've been washed up onto the scene. So
00:58they've been, they're actually out of the water predominantly. So they can't actually foul
01:03the water up anymore, which is something we haven't had before. They've always died in
01:06the river system through the town and that's led to more kills afterwards.
01:09And what was the cause of, what was established as the cause of the previous kills?
01:14Look, I think in this case here, I think the temperature change for Boney Brim is probably
01:20pretty right. I would have thought that that's, we went from significant, you know, high 40s,
01:25you know, most people are saying it got to 50 out here, down to high 30s. So that change
01:30can upset the Boney Brim and then there's carp in there as well. So the lake's been drained
01:36for the last few months now. And I think some of the carp has sort of been caught in some
01:40of the backwaters and died and then been dragged out in the strong winds over Sunday night or
01:45Monday, what blew them up onto the banks here at Lake Menindie.
01:49Explain for us how the lake system works there.
01:53Well, it's probably a little tricky, but there's three main storages here. The Darling River runs
01:57in the top on Lake Weatherill. Then we have Lake from Armaroo and then into Lake Menindie behind
02:02me, as you see. So the Menindie and corn dealer are joined together. So there's one large storage
02:06here and these releases from Menindie and those upstream ones all go back into the Darling Barnet
02:11River and head downstream towards Winkworth. Yeah, so it's kind of all regulated. And what's
02:16been happening with the levels over the last couple of weeks? Oh, well, they've been dropping. So
02:21there's been releases called by the MWA to supply water for Victoria and South Australia and New
02:26South Wales out of here. So there's been a call on water for quite a number of months now. So the lake has
02:31been dropping. And that's probably led to the fish being up higher after they've died
02:35and been washed up and the water's receded back a little bit away from there. And the wind,
02:39obviously we had some pretty strong winds the last couple of days as well.
02:41And what's going to happen with the clean up now?
02:44Yeah, it's been really slow on the clean up. Disappointing.
02:47After Chief Science report of 23, there's about $6 million set aside for EPA to come up with a plan.
02:53And we're still standing tonight with the bulk of the fish still here. I know the Barkingey
02:57Rangers and the council today have done a really good job and the Rangers did an awesome
03:01job in the heat last week with some fish in the weir pool. But this needed some machinery on the
03:05ground straight away. And the EPA plan has been caught well short. As everyone suspected,
03:11they went up to the task. So hopefully on the back of some work from our local member and Penny Sharp
03:16and others that have got involved today, we can actually have a proper look at how clean up
03:20processes go forward. Because, you know, seriously, this is a four or five hour job probably.
03:25And here we are two days in and we really start work tomorrow. So it's not good enough.
03:29Yeah. And should lessons have been learned from last time?
03:32Yeah, I think the EPA has really struggled to engage with community and engage with people that
03:36have been involved. And that's led to this. Like, this needs a mini excavator and a couple of
03:42loaders or something. There's six mini excavators in town and there's two or three loaders. We could
03:47have been well and truly onto this and finished, to be fair. So yeah, that's been disappointing. But
03:51hopefully we can learn lessons. It's not the end of the world. As I said, the fish are out of the water,
03:55so they can't cause any more growth of water quality. So hopefully the lessons are learned
03:59and we're better prepared next time. So what do you think the fish population
04:04in the lake would be now in terms of how drastically this has affected by it? Like,
04:10would this be 10% of the total fish population or something like that? Or you just don't know?
04:15It's hard to tell. But if we look at the river system, predominantly 25 million fish and they're
04:20basically bony. So we're talking 300,000 years. It could easily be 20 million, 30 million bony
04:25brim in this lake. So we're talking really low percentages. So I guess the concern is,
04:31as we've had with other fish kills, is they've always started off with the smaller one that's
04:34led to worse water quality after that event and caused bigger fish kills. I guess I'm a bit relieved
04:40to see these fish out of the water, which is a start. But yeah, certainly all the big fish kills
04:45have started with the smaller one. So I guess it just raises concern a bit. Still got a hot month
04:49ahead of us with February around the corner. It's just started now.
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