Murray Darling Basin: The water fight of their lives
As drought throttles the Murray-Darling Basin, South Australia’s Lower Lakes are back in the crosshairs of politicians and irrigators from upstream states. But these women are ready for the fight.
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At sunset the grey-blue water of the Murray Mouth reflects the darkening sky.
Gloria Jones, her daughter Julie, and friend Elizabeth Tregenza, all members of the River Lakes and Coorong Action Group, see intense beauty, but great vulnerability in this wild landscape at the bottom of the vast river catchment, the Murray-Darling Basin.
For years they have been witness to the wildly fluctuating fortunes of this precious but deeply misunderstood national treasure.
The group was formed by legendary Lower Lakes and Coorong fisher and custodian Henry Jones, and wife Gloria, to oppose the Wellington Weir, announced by the then State Government during the Millennium Drought to guarantee Adelaide’s drinking water supply.
The group has become the vanguard for the Lower Lakes and Coorong, the protective force defending the estuary from a myriad of upstream threats.
Today these women issue a new urgent warning that South Australia faces a fresh threat to the Lower Lakes and Coorong – the escalating campaign by upstream states to cut off the river’s end from the rest of the system in a new push to build a weir and remove the barrages.
Gloria Jones says a weir “will suffocate this wilderness”.
“It will kill more frogs, invertebrates and macroinvertebrates, turtles, birds, aquatic plants and thousands of tonnes of fish,” she says. Two-thirds of the Coorong is on “life-support”, she adds. “Yabbies, Murray cod, silver perch, catfish are disappearing, while many aquatic plants are dead or dying.”
As well as fears about the push for a weir, a new threat to SA’s take from the Murray emerged this week when an under-pressure Morrison Government ordered a review of water-sharing arrangements across the Basin.
The implicit threat from the review, to be done by former Federal Police chief Mick Keelty – now Murray-Darling Interim Inspector-General – is that SA’s guaranteed allocation of water flowing across the border could be cut, particularly in droughts.
Yet this flow is critical to remove salt and silt from the Mouth – and keeping it open – as well as for Adelaide’s drinking water.
Jones says a weir would mean abandoning the Lower Lakes and Coorong to the Southern Ocean, allowing sea water to enter the estuary, ruining the whole system. “The Lower Lakes and Coorong are the estuary of Australia’s largest river,” Tregenza says.
‘The basin is interconnected. To kill the estuary would kill the river.”
The women stress the end of the river is part of the whole system, from the ephemeral rivers in central Queensland to the headwaters of the Murray in the Australian Alps where snow melt pulses through springs flowing into the Murray.
It’s Australia’s largest river system, spanning four states and a territory, making up 14 per cent of the mainland, home to 2.6 million people, and dubbed the nation’s “food bowl” for its $24 billion agriculture and horticulture industry.
But the bottom end of the river has long been a forgotten and neglected part of the massive network, only emerging in times of drought as an easy target for lack of water.
Debate has raged for years about the Lower Lakes and Coorong and their role in the river system – and for these women it is deeply frustrating.
They are angry and despairing over the upstream push to abandon the end of the river. But then, acute despair echoes across Basin communities.
SAWeekend talked to people throughout the Basin and found contrasting points of view, but common feelings of overwhelming sadness, anger, and, in some cases, great distress.
Along the Murray in NSW and Victoria, irrigators and farmers are faced with diminished or even no access to water this season. Riverina irrigators are setting up a “water embassy” in Canberra to send a message of protest to the Federal Government. In central west NSW, custodians of the Macquarie Marshes lament the impact lack of water is having on native bird rookeries, with a massive drop in breeding birds.
In SA’s Riverland, despite a 100 per cent water allocation for irrigators, the skyrocketing water market is forcing some growers to abandon plantings. This is because some Riverland irrigators sold water to expand or consolidate their businesses and are now struggling to buy it again on the heavily contested open market.
Riverland irrigators have their full allocation thanks to having high security water licences due to SA capping its water use from the Murray in 1969.
But other states continued to extract more water from the system leading to over-allocation. In NSW, many Murray irrigators have general security licences, leaving them vulnerable to seasonal fluctuations – and this year irrigators in this category have a zero allocation of water.
Inevitably the delicate détente of Basin politics – held together by 2012’s federal Murray Darling Basin Plan – is splintering yet again, with NSW’s thundering threats to pull out, and similar mutterings from Victoria.
The scene is set for a dramatic meeting of state and Commonwealth water ministers in Brisbane this month.
Drought is yet again sucking the life out of the massive Basin, draining away precious water from irrigators and the environment.
The Millennium Drought, which finally broke in 2010, devastated Basin communities and now a giant slice of Australia is again facing massive transition, upheaval and uncertainty prompted by drought and climate change.
Inevitably this has triggered a battle of state against state, industry against industry, and economy against the environment as the age-old water wars are reignited.
The latest drought has placed enormous pressure on the Basin Plan, the federal parliament’s controversial bid to restore the system. And it has triggered talk Basin-wide about the 142,000ha of Lake Alexandrina, Lake Albert and the Coorong – and why the “wasteful” evaporation of water from the river’s Lower Lakes should stop.
At the peak of the Millennium Drought, the Wellington Weir was promoted as a last resort to ensure Adelaide’s access to drinking water. It was to be a temporary weir that could be removed when flows improved.
Facing opposition and logistical issues, the Government in 2009 ditched the weir, instead opting for a desalination plant.
Almost miraculously rain started to fall in the upper catchment and rivers began flowing again. The Millennium Drought that devastated so much of the Basin for a decade was over.
Today in drought’s grip yet again, Basin communities in NSW and Victoria are returning to the Wellington Weir as a silver bullet for restoring lost water.
Building the so-called “Lock Zero” near Wellington would stop the flow into the Lower Lakes, allegedly saving millions of megalitres of river water from evaporation and letting upstream irrigators use water allocations.
It’s an idea promoted by Nationals maverick and former Federal Water Minister Barnaby Joyce, as well as the Victorian and NSW branches of the National Party.
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro has also called for the barrages at the Mouth to be removed and the Southern Ocean allowed to enter the Mouth and Lower Lakes.
SA should “pull their weight,” he says.
“We have got communities on their knees, irrigators falling over and the future of parts of regional NSW are under the pump, while South Australia continues to get water. That’s just not fair.”
Distressed upstream irrigation communities back the move, with untested claims a weir could add 2700GL extra water to irrigation, more than five times the amount of water in Sydney Harbour.
But to the communities of the Lower Murray, Lock Zero is a disastrous proposal that would destroy the Ramsar-listed wetlands of international importance, the Lower Lakes and Coorong. With no inflow from the Murray to flush salt and silt out of the Murray Mouth, the estuary would turn hypersaline, risking the exposure through low water levels of acid sulfate soils which can kill native plants and fish.
“If a weir is built at Wellington and the lakes left to slowly die then surely that is an environmental crime,” the River Lakes and Coorong Action Group’s Gloria Jones says.
While drought and climate change are compromising the system, ultimately “it is just plain over-allocation” of water that is to blame for the Basin’s woes.
Jones and the members of the group are urging South Australians to heed the threat and fight for the Murray-Darling’s estuary. “It should be this state’s most important agenda,” she says.
“We know rivers die from the bottom.”
VICTORIA
Andrew Leahy, Murrabit dairy farmer
Andrew Leahy has seen the exodus of dairy farmers from his community as the challenges of the industry have mounted and access to Murray River water diminished.
Thirty years ago, there were almost 30 dairy farms in the Murrabit area, upstream of Swan Hill on the Murray River in Victoria, but that has dropped to just five.
Deregulation of the industry prompted much of this change, but the Millennium Drought and the current extreme dry conditions have significantly impacted the industry, which is reliant on access to water.
Leahy, a fifth-generation dairy farmer, is working with a water allocation for this season that has halved due to drought in the Basin, and the cost of temporary water on the open market has jumped to more than $1000 a megalitre. Leahy is buying in fodder to feed his herd of 600 cows and trying to resist destocking his farm.
Restructuring of the dairy industry is compounding the current challenges for Leahy. “It is mentally wearing on a lot of people,” he says.
Leahy says he feels for the farmers across the river in NSW with general security water, who have zero allocation this season. “They’re in a lot of strife,” he says.
As for the future of the river he relies on, Leahy is hopeful. “I think it’s going to rain again and we will be back,” he says.
But he also wants a rethink of elements of the Basin Plan. “I’m not going to say stop the Basin Plan, but I think we need to reassess where we are and what’s going on.”
NEW SOUTH WALES
Dugald Bucknell, Macquarie Marshes
Dugald Bucknell recalls the teeming bird life on the Macquarie Marshes of 30 years ago.
“In the late ’70s, early ’80s there would be a mass of birds taking off – now there is nothing there,” he says.
The semipermanent wetlands in central northern NSW are a national treasure, a mosaic of reeds, marshes and river red gum woodlands sustaining multiple species of water bird. As well, the Ramsar-listed wetlands are habitat for multiple species of fish, turtles, frogs and snakes.
Bucknell is one of a small group of pastoralists who own in total about 80 per cent of the Macquarie Marshes and floodplain.
They formed the Macquarie Marshes Environmental Landholders Association to work to conserve and protect the wetlands. The wetlands rely on the flooding and drying cycle to support the native vegetation and bird life, but Bucknell says there have been fewer floods due to diversion of water from the Macquarie River. He is scathing of the management of the river system.
“There is absolutely nothing. Everything, birds, grasses, every part of the ecosystem has been smashed,” he says.
The rookery bird numbers were estimated in 2011 at 100,000 in total but by 2016 that had dropped to 60,000.
“That’s just the birds … what about all the others, bugs, frogs, snakes. Their numbers have been absolutely smashed,” Bucknell says. “It’s an absolute disgrace, of mismanagement, corruption, and subsidisation of the irrigation industries.”
He believes a federal Royal Commission must be established to look into the management of the Murray-Darling Basin and the Basin Plan.
“It’s not a matter of if there will be a Royal Commission, it’s a matter of when,” he said.
NEW SOUTH WALES
Darcy Hare, Riverina
When Darcy Hare was in grade 7 at his local school there were 42 kids in his class. His younger sister was one of just five kids in grade 7 at the same school when she attended. Hare, a third-generation rice grower near Wakool in the NSW Riverina, tells this story to illustrate the massive upheaval in his community over the past 20 years.
Wakool experienced a population decline from 2001 to 2016 of 46 per cent, and during the same period a drop of irrigation jobs of 72 per cent.
“It has been devastating,” Hare says.
The Millennium Drought hit Wakool and other Riverina communities hard, and, after a few years of reprieve, current extreme dry conditions have now halted any recovery. Hare says the rolling out of the Basin Plan from 2012 has also been a blow to his community, with irrigators still recovering from the Millennium Drought opting to sell their water and abandon rice growing.
For the past two seasons Hare has had no access to his general security water allocation and has not grown a crop.
“My grandfather grew rice for 49 years in a row,” he says.
“The last 17 years it’s been nine (rice crops) out of 17. “What has hurt us is the total mismanagement of water resources during dry times such as this.”
Hare is the vice chair of the Southern Riverina Irrigators, which has grouped with other irrigator representatives and local councils to lobby for authorities to “Pause the Plan”.
Now Hare says the time for a pause has passed and the new phase of the campaign makes the call to “Can the Plan”. They took their protest to Canberra this week, setting up a “water embassy”.
The irrigators are part of a class action lodged against the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, which claims the decision to drain Menindee Lakes in 2016-17 has led to their zero water allocation.
Menindee Lakes is used in part for storage to supply water to SA, and the irrigators claim that after the lakes were drained, Murray River water that would normally provide their allocation was diverted downstream to ensure SA got its share of water.
The NSW irrigators’ campaign also calls for the radical changes to the Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth with the construction of Lock Zero at Wellington, a move that would turn the water below it saline.
Hare claims it will save thousands of gigalitres in evaporation every year, and give irrigators access to more of their water in dry times.
It’s a call that’s becoming more insistent across distressed irrigator groups in NSW and Victoria.
But Hare also points to the Northern Basin where water take is yet to be properly metered, and there are glaring questions about irrigator compliance.
He says Southern Riverina irrigators feel “like we’ve been penalised” for their compliance and metering of water use.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Jeff McDonald, Riverland Lending Services, financial consultant to Riverland irrigators
Wild, hot winds are whipping up topsoil from parched farms and blanketing the Riverland in red dust. Dust storms this spring are emblematic of the woes of many local growers, Riverland financial consultant Jeff McDonald says.
“It’s sapping,” he says. “It’s pretty hard on hot days. It’s going to be a tough summer.”
Riverland irrigators with their high security water have access to 100 per cent of their allocation this season, but some will suffer from exposure to the exorbitant temporary water market, where a megalitre, a million litres, fetches close to $1000.
McDonald says a number of grape growers had sold water through the State Government’s SARMS 3IP program, which aims to restore water to the river.
But these growers were expecting to buy temporary water on the market, a plan now thwarted by the spike in demand that has driven up prices on the spot market.
“There are a lot of people who sold water to make savings, expand their businesses, become more efficient,” McDonald says. “The spot market is close to $1000 a megalitre, so people leasing water are in a world of pain. If you are exposed to the spot market you are just not viable.”
McDonald says a number of growers who can’t afford to buy from the market have “turned off water”, effectively allowing their crops to die.
Their attempts to borrow money against their equity to fund temporary water have failed too, with banks tightening lending.
“It’s an emotional thing. The majority of irrigators are mums and dads with families to feed,” McDonald says.
But for some growers the high prices for water are a positive. Some older growers have opted to retire their blocks and lease their water, accumulating a superannuation nest egg.
Other growers have taken the opportunity to turn off water to white wine grapes, which fetch a relatively low price, ahead of replanting with a higher value crop. And, of course, they are making a windfall leasing their water this season.
McDonald sees a major transition for the Riverland, triggered by drought, the exorbitant cost of temporary water, and the low return on some crops.
Irrigators are likely to move away from lower value crops such as white wine grapes, and some growers may leave the industry altogether.
But he warns against the Federal Government intervening with Exceptional Circumstances support. He says during the Millennium Drought the Commonwealth provided Exceptional Circumstances support in interest rates subsidies to impacted irrigators, but it effectively propped up failing ventures.
“The biggest mistake the Government could make is to provide welfare support through the Exceptional Circumstances, because it just masks problems,” McDonald says.