Updated
The NSW Primary Industries Minister Niall Blair has revealed there has been another fish kill, this time on the NSW-Victorian border at Lake Hume.
- Temperatures in NSW are expected to soar over the next few days
- The NSW Regional Water Minister says that means more fish will be killed in waterways
- Up to a million fish died at Menindee last week and the clean-up is underway
The latest kill comes as contractors at Menindee, in the state's west, begin to dispose of up to a million fish carcasses as a result of an algal bloom last week.
Mr Blair said Lake Hume was 30 per cent full and controlled by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
"It just goes to show that when we get a week of weather like this, on top of the drought conditions that we've seen right across NSW, that fish kills are something that unfortunately we do experience," he said.
The Department of Primary Industries is investigating reports up to 1800 carp were found dead in the water at Lake Hume.
Mr Blair said there had also been a fish kill outside Port Macquarie on Friday and yesterday at Lake Burrendong near Dubbo.
He said the latter was a result of minor flash flooding that washed organic matter into the dam.
Temperatures in the Menindee region are expected to reach up to 46 degrees this week as contractors begin work after the algal bloom last week deprived the water of oxygen.
Mr Blair said the NSW Government had purchased 16 aerators to help restore oxygen to waterways, including the Darling River at Menindee, Lake Keepit and Lake Burrendong.
The solar-powered devices will arrive in the next 24 hours from Western Australia and run through the night, but Mr Blair conceded they were a "band-aid solution".
"Nothing will stop this fish kill unless we get proper river flows and water levels in our dams back up to normal, but we're looking at doing everything we can to try and limit the damage," he said.
Mr Blair insisted water resources in NSW had not been over-allocated.
"We've got water-sharing rules across every valley across NSW," he said.
The Minister said it was unacceptable to "point the finger" at farmers for using too much water.
"Have a look at the in-flow records, have a look at the allocations that farmers haven't received and then come back to me and have a sensible debate with me about the facts."
Mr Blair said water-intense farming was still viable and the state had strengthened its compliance regime to make sure allocation rules were not broken.
The Murray-Darling Basin Plan remained the best option to manage water and share it between jurisdictions, he added.
The Federal Government has proposed using $5 million of Murray-Darling Basin funding for a native fish recovery strategy following the Menindee fish kill.
The Opposition has called for an independent taskforce, run by scientists, to examine its cause.
Topics: animals-and-nature, fish, animal-science, politics-and-government, sydney-2000
First posted