Certainly the amount of time the river is spending in the red and yellow zones is increasing through time, and as withdrawals increase you'd expect that to continue to push the river below the line. It really is important. The 5.2% of median flow that Tony talked about is the median weekly flow; the actual withdrawal could be any number, based on how low the flows close up. So there really is no protection for the river in those extremely low-flow periods.
On May 13th, 2009. See this statement in context.