STOP THE DAM

Kings Beach – Let the salt be 🌊

News - 25/10/2026

What happens when salt can't get out? Look at the Coorong

One of the people at the meeting used to live down near the Coorong in South Australia and brought this up during the tea break, and when we looked into it we thought more people should know about it.

The Coorong is a long lagoon at the bottom of the River Murray. During the Millennium Drought the river stopped flowing through and the water in the South Lagoon had nowhere to go, so the water evaporated and the salt stayed, and salinity peaked at about five times seawater. The water plant that used to dominate the South Lagoon was hit very hard and the plants, invertebrates, fish and waterbirds were all affected. The South Australian Government's fact sheet uses the word catastrophic, and people are still working to bring it back.

We know Kings is not the Coorong, it is a tiny beach and the Coorong is more than 100km long and a very different place, and we are not experts. But the lesson seems to be that salt becomes a problem when it can't get out, and the whole idea of the wall is to stop the salt getting out, so we would really like someone to explain to us whether salt building up behind a wall is a good thing or a bad thing.