He sees that "the demand on what is now a precious water allocation will be eased .." In fact the saving will be 5000 ML per annum, a fairly poor saving for the direct loss of over 200 jobs and many more indirectly. But then he has a further swipe at the mill talking about "the cessation of 1500 tonnes of salt being dumped into the river .."

He says "The master plan to offset the salt discharge into the Murray River was to extract 3000 tonnes of salt from the Billabong Creek just north of Walla Walla. Did this ever occur? Where did this salt end up going to?"

So let's have some facts. The Billabong Creek has a saline aquifer lying above a fresh water aquifer. If the fresh water aquifer begins to rise the salt water comes to the surface and flows into the creek. For many years NSW authorities had operated a pumping system to pump water from the fresh aquifer into the creek and precent the salt water aquifer rising and flowing into the creek. They had done long-term detailed modelling and analysis to prove the effectiveness of this system.

The mill agreed to pay the pumping costs and, in return, for every two tonnes of salt prevented from entering the creek and then the Murray River, they could discharge one tonne of salt in their treated wastewater into the river. The salt never went anywhere, it stayed in the aquifer. A net gain for the river. The costs of this pumping scheme will once again be borne by NSW taxpayers.

Mike Bonito wants The Border Mail to deny the climate change deniers the time of day. But there are no climate change "deniers". We all admit there is climate change as has been for millennia.

If I may ask, who is the "loony" - those that say we agree or those that glue themselves to roads? Does Mr Bonito read the same Border Mail as I do? It would seem not because there are far more letters saying we are doomed because of climate change than there are from rational persons being given space in The Border Mail these days.

You recently published a short but powerful letter from Mike Bonito who suggested that The Border Mail might stop publishing letters from climate change deniers because their views are as loony and out of step as flat earthers, people who think the moon landings were faked and those who believe Elvis is still alive.

The response from Gary Evans (October 30) would suggest Mr Bonito had a point. In a somewhat rambling fashion, Mr Evans said that people who agree with Mr Bonito "have spent too long in communist dictatorships", and have "never paid a business electricity bill" followed by something about businesses going overseas.

He then added "climate change this year, or is it global warming? Wait until next year and we will call it something else", which just shows how much time and energy is being wasted on pointless debate. What you call the increasing temperature of our oceans and atmosphere is immaterial, and the obsession with that kind of irrelevant detail is exactly what we don't need. Mike Bonito was right.