Forgotten irrigators want water to flow

SOUTH Australia's downstream irrigators say they support a Murray Darling Basin plan and stand to benefit from it, in stark contrast to their interstate counterparts.

SOUTH Australia's downstream irrigators say they support a Murray Darling Basin plan and stand to benefit from it, in stark contrast to their interstate counterparts.

Irrigators below Lock 1, from Blanchetown to Wellington, say they are the forgotten members of the debate raging across three states.

Decimated by a decade of drought, the number of dairy farmers across the 5000ha of farmland has plummeted from 120 to about 20.

Those who remain have had to slash production and make the most of a trickle of water flowing past Lock 1, once the eastern states have taken their share.

"We feel like the totally forgotten stakeholders, not only in our state, but in the basin," Murray Bridge farmer Joanne Pfeiffer said.

"It's fantastic the Lower Lakes have been able to raise their profile, but we felt as if nobody realised we had a situation as well. We were the ones that were left in the middle."

Today, they will get a chance to have their say at a Murray Darling Basin authority public consultation meeting in Murray Bridge.

The MDBA has suggested cuts in water allocations of between 27 and 37 per cent to deliver an extra 3000 to 4000 gigalitres a year in river flows.

NSW and Victorian irrigators have vigorously opposed the MDBA's draft plan guidelines since they were released earlier this month, suggesting tens of thousands of people could lose their jobs.

Mrs Pfeiffer said she and her fellow farmers below Lock 1 supported a plan, as long as it delivered more water.

"We have to have a basin plan, we have to get more water flowing through the Murray," she said. "We want a consistent flow to shore up the security of our licences that we had previously."

Mrs Pfeiffer said the MDBA's current proposal might need some tinkering to recognise the efficiencies already made by South Australian irrigators.

She said if more water did not flow past Lock 1, the majority of remaining farmers could eventually sell up.

"It is the most fertile land to dairy on in Australia.

"Does the Government want 5000ha of wasteland?"

South Australian Irrigators Council chairman Ian Zadow, a potato farmer at Caloote, said irrigators below Lock 1 had been hit by a double whammy during the drought.

"I think the thing we felt was so unfair was people above Lock 1 only had to deal with the low allocations, whereas below Lock 1, we also had to deal with the low bore water level," he said.

"We suffered a drop in the water level which meant any of us who wanted to stay in business had to move our pumps closer to the water's edge."

He said many irrigators below Lock 1 could not access any water, no matter what their allocation was. "I think they have been forgotten, but I wouldn't relate that to the allocations. I'd relate that to access to the water level itself.

"For a lot of the people down here, they needed to have water at a higher level for them to be able to take advantage of their licence."