UNLESS there is heavy rain in the Murray-Darling Basin over the rest of the year, 90% of South Australians face environmental catastrophe caused by the movement of heavy metals in solution up the river by osmosis. Osmosis is the process by which any solution that is in higher concentration in one part of a body of fluid will flow into the other parts with a lower concentration until the solution is evenly distributed. Heavy metals such as arsenic and lead in solution already poison Lake Alexandrina at the mouth of the Murray. The lake's bed is exposed to oxygen because the lake is half empty, so the sulphates are converted into sulphuric acid, which leaches the heavy metals such as arsenic and lead out of the soil. The poisonous solution then goes into the food chain. Arsenic and lead cause cancer and brain damage in children. If osmosis is allowed to continue, it is anticipated that the poisoning of the Murray will have reached Murray Bridge - where water is pumped to Adelaide - by February On the other hand, irrigators on the Goulbourn who depend on water from Eildon Reservoir, have been allocated 850 gigalitres, even though only 460 gigalitres are left. This impending crisis did not happen overnight. For at least three years the relevant governments have been told by technical experts from SA Water, CSIRO and those who now constitute the Wentworth Group that South Australia would be looking down the barrel of catastrophe by 2009 unless there was above-average rain in the basin, or unless water could be diverted from existing storages. But federal Minister for Water Penny Wong has done nothing, while South Australian Minister for Water Security Karlene Maywald seems struck dumb by the enormity of the problem. The Brumby Government appears hell bent on worsening the crisis. Earlier this month, I submitted written questions to the federal and South Australian ministers responsible for water and to Goulburn-Murray Water chairman Stephen Mills (whose public authority is in the eye of the storm from the Victorian perspective). None of the three have acknowledged the requests. The more detailed questions to Maywald gives the flavour, with the additions in brackets to provide context: