Title: Farmers put on alligator weed outbreak alert
[ABC News Tue Oct 6, 2009] Farmers are being asked to check for outbreaks of alligator weed over the coming months to prevent its spread into the Murray-Darling Basin. The noxious weeds inspector with Griffith City Council, Anthony Berry, says properties and channels should be checked four times for alligator weed between now and May. Official inspections for the the fast spreading weed will continue until then. Mr Berry says there are still about 10 properties near Griffith with infestations dating back to the 1993 outbreak in Barren Box swamp and there are many further west.
"It totally clogs out and deoxygenates channels and basically destroys the irrigation system as per the flow of water to properties and things like that," he said. "It's an extremely hard and difficult weed to eradicate - it's got the capability of growing up to a metre in a week. "If it gets into the Murray-Darling where it's in the Wah Wah district and gets into the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee or the Murray, we'll have no way of containing it."
Mr Berry says there will be help for farmers with an outbreak of alligator weed and the property may be quarantined if it is very bad.
"We are reducing infestations - in the Wah Wah district, over the last five years, we've gone from probably 400 plants down to about 40 last year," he said. "We are getting to the end of it. It's the type of weed we're going to have to look at for the next 20 years, just to keep an eye on it just to make sure it's not coming up again."