17-07-2001

Australia's National Dryland Salinity Program (NDSP) national manager Richard Price has challenged local government authorities to join forces in supporting salinity research and development innovation in order to combat the continued risk of salinity to regional and urban infrastructure.

Speaking at the National Local Government Salinity Summit, being held in Moama, NSW, this week, Mr Price said the costs of dryland salinity to local government were significant, but could be reduced if authorities recognised the planning and policy messages and other outcomes arising from NDSP research, development and extension.

'Research is often an under-valued imperative that is essential to providing the knowledge base for sound decision making,' he said.

'Past research has provided the basic understanding of the scale, effects, causes and processes of salinity. Future research will focus on the management of options of reversing, containing or adapting to salinity in order to maximise the social, economic and environmental benefits to the Australian community.'

Mr Price said that as Australia's lead knowledge broker of research, development and extension efforts to combat the risk of salinity to our land and water resources, NDSP managed a number of investments to meet the future salinity management needs of both government and community.

'Dryland salinity is the major natural resource management issue facing both rural and urban Australia,' he said.

'Its impacts are enormous in terms of costs to our environmental heritage, water quality, biodiversity, agricultural productivity and urban and rural infrastructure. The likely increase in the extent of dryland salinity from the current 2,500,000 hectares to potentially 17,000,000 ha presents enormous challenges; virtually every Australian will be affected in some way by the diverse nature of dryland salinity.'

Mr Price said NDSP supported a number of projects of direct relevance to local government:

Enhancing capacity of local government
Documents and analyses local government successes and failures in managing dryland salinity, assesses the economic rationale for involvement and identifies potential planning policies allowing local government to better consider salinity and related natural resource management activities.

• Local government salinity management handbook
  Provides a resource guide for public works professionals dealing with the impacts of salinity. A draft guide for comment will be launched at the National Local Government Salinity Summit.
  
• Tools for salinity management
  Provides extension material and skills for the management of dryland salinity throughout the Murray-Darling Basin through a toolkit available on the NDSP web site (www.ndsp.gov.au) and through the facilitation of a Basin-wide network.
  
• Evaluation of engineering options
  Collates and assesses information, literature and guidelines on engineering techniques to manage dryland salinity, and provides a decision support system to assist select appropriate options under different scenarios.
  
• Options for productive use of saline lands (OPUS)
  Identifies and assesses innovative approaches to the use of saline land and water with the aim of future development of potential industries that may turn the salinity problem into an economic opportunity.

Appraisal of infrastructure assets under threat
Collates impacts on and costs to various types of public and private infrastructure threatened or already affected by salinity.

Determining the costs of dryland salinity
Provides guidelines for identifying and valuing the full impacts of dryland salinity to regional communities.

Mr Price said a number of innovative local government authorities across Australia had demonstrated that by investing in solutions-based research, development and extension work dryland salinity could be managed cost-effectively.

'Councils that take a bold approach to managing their salinity problems, addressing the causes rather than the symptoms, will be rewarded in reducing the heavy cost of salinity,' he said.

'They may also find that new and profitable industries will emerge as a result, generating new forms of income for their districts.'

ENDS

For further information please contact:

Please contact Land & Water Australia
Email: land&wateraustralia@lwa.gov.au
Phone: 02 6263 6000