It was worth the three-year long fight to prove the massive volume of water the department was proposing to gift irrigators in the north was not only illegal, it was not in line with the basin plan and would negatively impact both environment and economies downstream.
The recent withdrawal of five ‘flawed’ northern basin Water Resource Plans by the NSW Water Minister Rose Jackson is proof we were on the money.
More than $50 million of taxpayers dollars has been wasted and we are still nowhere.
SRI accurately pointed out under the SDL, 46 gigalitres was allowed for harvesting and we even engaged legal advice to write to Water Minister Tanya Plibersek requesting she not accredit the plan because the volumes were unlawful and could be the subject of a legal challenge.
And yet we still ended up with WRPs with combined harvesting licences of approximately two million megalitres taken from the Darling River, causing more fish kills and economic losses downstream.
Flood plain harvesting impacts NSW Murray general security because when the 1850 Gl legislated flow for South Australia cannot be partly met by the Darling River, the total volume is taken from upstream storages, reducing our access to NSW Murray general security.
As irrigators — all we want is fair and reasonable access to water we are licenced and metered to take.
We are hoping the new state government will be a game changer in this space. We expect the Labor party and the water minister, with absolute support from Greens and Independents to redraft a reasonable legal volume, inline with existing rules and fairer to all NSW water users.
The current withdrawal of water resource plans is a start and we urge Rose Jackson to use this opportunity to finally address the issue of over extraction in the north.
On four separate occasions — with the assistance of our local member Helen Dalton — we successfully stopped a National Party regulation that had the potential to jeopardise up to 40 per cent allocation to SRI members in any given year.
We faced significant resistance — this water is worth billions of dollars to a relatively small amount of large landowners in northern NSW.
Challenging a government department with deep pockets and no desire to listen to us was a huge obstacle — but as we have shown, it was not insurmountable.
I just want to point out — there is still a legal and democratic process in this country and people need to have confidence, keep up the fight and stay united on issues which negatively impact our water allocations and region in general.
Government needs to be aware, water debates are never between the environment and farmers, but rather between regions.
We process and produce $7 billion of agricultural product and in today’s global environment of pandemics and wars — one has to ask, what government, in their right mind, would risk our food security?
In a time when we have a list of issues including a 450 Gl buyback which was only ever to apply — “subject to no negative socio-economic impact”.
Chris Brooks
Southern Riverina Irrigators chair
Environment misses out
It was interesting to read the government propaganda telling us an American river ecologist thought our Murray-Darling Basin Plan was “a model for other countries seeking to support communities and healthy rivers into the future”.
Of course, if they didn’t want to promote their own agenda, governments and their agencies could also find an increasing number of Australian river ecologists who would disagree.
These scientists, like communities who live and breathe our rivers, see the basin plan for what it really is: a political attempt to provide South Australia with an abundant water supply for industry, canal-based housing developments, cheap urban water etc.
If it was truly for the environment, governments would acknowledge that the initial agreed water recovery target of 2750 gigalitres has been well exceeded.
There are now more than 4600 Gl available for the environment, but our river systems do not have the capacity to deliver anywhere near this amount to South Australia.
If governments took the advice of many Australian scientists, especially those who are based in the basin rather than in capital cities and on the government-funded gravy train, they would cease unnecessary and damaging water recovery, stop treating the Murray River as a drainage channel and start developing the scientific measures which are available and can play a more genuine role in sustaining our river environs.
Unfortunately, the past 15 years of water management experience tells me that will not happen until the environment is the priority, rather than politics.
Daryl McDonald
Murrabit
24°C