The reservoirs were officially 3.1 per cent on Thursday, according to WaterNSW, but most of the lakes themselves were a sea of baked earth. Remaining pools will shrink further with at least six days in a row forecast to reach 41 degrees or more, including 44-45 degrees from Monday to Wednesday. Drying out in a hurry: the Menindee Lakes system as of January 2019. Credit:Nick Moir Richard Kingsford, director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at the University of NSW, said he was not surprised by the grim sights of mired animals near Menindee Lakes. "In droughts, rivers are the last resort for so much of our wildlife," Professor Kingsford said. "They are often the only place with drinking water and so critical for wildlife such as kangaroos, parrots and pigeons."

A kangaroo struggles in mud in an all but dried-up drainage canal in the Menindee Lakes system. Credit:Nick Moir A sheep mired in drainage canals at Lake Cawndilla. Credit:Nick Moir In the town itself, the stench from rotting fish carcasses near the main boat ramp wafts into the Burke and Wills Menindee Motel. Days on from Sunday’s discovery of the huge fish kill, fisheries staff have mostly left and the bulk of the corpses of bony herring, perches and Murray Cod are disintegrating or sinking from view. Inquiry demanded

Loading Back in Sydney, NSW Labor upped the political ante on Thursday, a day after Minister Blair made a visit to Menindee, interrupted in part by local protesters demanding more water to help flush out the blue-green algal blooms that triggered the die-off. Labor leader Michael Daley called for a special commission of inquiry into the "ecological catastrophe" at Menindee. The die-off, the fourth in the Murray-Darling Basin in recent months, has drawn widespread attention to the plight of the country's river system. One video posted to Facebook by local grazier Rob McBride and a friend holding dead Murray cod has attracted millions of views. "Mature fish that survived decades of droughts could not survive the Liberal-Nationals’ water policy," Mr Daley said.

"The [Coalition parties] have been repeatedly warned by far west residents, community groups, scientists and Labor that their water policies would cause devastation on the Darling River." 'Rewriting history' Mr Blair dismissed Mr Daley's demand saying that he had used his first comments about the drought to "rewrite history by ignoring the fact that similar environmental catastrophes happened under their watch when last in government". “In fact, numerous fish kills occurred in the lower Darling and Menindee Lakes in the period 2002- 2004 during the Millennium drought," he said, citing Lake Pamamaroo which dried out in December 2002, three separate fish kill events in August 2003 on the Darling including at Menindee and one upstream of Pooncarie in February 2004 involving hundreds of Murray Cod. Taxpayers have stumped up more than $13 billion to restore the health of the basin. The latest fish die-off, along with other signs of wildlife and human populations hard hit by drought and heat, add to the likelihood that water will feature in this year's coming federal and NSW state elections.

The immediate cause of Menindee's calamity was a change in temperatures that killed much of the blue-green algal bloom on that part of the river. The dying algae worsened already low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water, pushing many fish beyond their tolerance levels. “The scale of this disaster is extraordinary and unprecedented," Mr Daley said. "We cannot be indifferent to the ecological impact and the effect on local residents who live along the river." Grazier Rob McBride's video of mass fish deaths went viral. Credit:Nick Moir Cancel plans Labor wants the inquiry to determine why the Liberals and Nationals sought "changes to water rules that reduced river flows and allowed the over-extraction of water by lobbyist irrigators who were National Party donors", while ignoring warnings from the Wentworth Group of Scientists and local communities.

NSW Labor confirmed that it would seek to overturn the plan - supported by all basin state governments and the Morrison government – to effectively decommission the Menindee Lakes System. Such a move, part of the Sustainable Diversion Limits projects, would "further reduce water flows in the lower Darling River and destroy fish breeding grounds in the Darling River", Labor said, adding it had "committed to abandon this plan to prevent further ecological destruction". Earlier on Thursday, Mr Blair told the Herald that he had asked his departments to conduct an urgent study into the fish deaths and the subsequent clean-up. He added the SDL project at Menindee, which aims to save 105 gigalitres a water a year, must proceed. "They don't understand what it would mean [to cancel it]," Blair says, of the NSW Labor stance. "You would blow up the [Murray-Darling Basin] Plan." Days after a mass fish kill in the Darling River at Menindee, hundreds of carcasses remain, stinking and rotting. Credit:Nick Moir

'Wake-up call' Jeremy Buckingham, the former Greens and now independent NSW MP, supported the NSW Labor move but said "it is needed at a federal level". “This mass fish kill be a wake-up call for Australia that we need to get out of a broken loop on water policy and that fundamentally adequate water must be prioritised for the environment before being allocated to large-scale irrigation," Mr Buckingham said as he left for Broken Hill after visiting the dead fish zones on Wednesday. Michael Murray, general manager of Cotton Australia, sought to counter criticism of irrigators and his industry for the plight at Menindee, saying the state’s cotton output would halve this year. “On the Barwon-Darling, the impact on cotton production is even more devastating with zero hectares of cotton being grown in Bourke this season, down from 4000 hectares the year before,” Mr Murray said in a statement .