Doubts over water recovery in the Murray as targets shift

A CUT to the water recovery target means the Murray will miss out on hundreds of gigalitres of water a year, one of the state’s top river experts says.

• No ‘Plan B’ for Murray
• Experts say plan set to fail
• Doubts raised over how water is flowing

A CUT to the water recovery target means the Murray will miss out on hundreds of gigalitres of water a year, one of the state’s top river experts says.

T he Advertiser has confirmed that the recent vote to let farmers keep using 605GL of water — which is then to be replaced by “alternative” measures to keep the Murray-Darling healthy — means the original 2750GL target for next year no longer stands.

The 605GL cut is effective immediately, while the replacement measures will be brought in over the years leading up to 2024.

University of Adelaide ecologist, Associate Professor David Paton said that meant the 2750GL needed for the river system would not be delivered until after 2024, if at all.

University of Adelaide Associate Professor David Paton.

The alternative measures include better water management or different operating rules to get the same environmental outcomes as keeping the 605GL in the river, and Assoc Prof Paton says those projects are mostly proposals.

“You cannot claim that one has returned the water before you have implemented the works,” he said.

“Bottom line – the environment is expected to hang on for another seven years at least before we as a nation will have actually supposedly given back somewhat less than the minimum ... that the environment needed to be health, resilient, and sustainably so.”

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority said states would have until 2024 to get the projects working but that if the projects didn’t deliver as promised, any shortfall would be recovered. “The amendment to the Basin Plan agreed by Parliament last week reduces the 2750GL water recovery target by 605GL in the Southern Basin (a further 70GL in the north is also likely to be re-tabled soon),” a spokeswoman said, adding that there was “a legislated reconciliation process to ensure that any shortfall is recovered”.

Opposition water spokesman Tony Burke said there were still questions over the water-saving projects but they would be closely monitored.

“I don’t know whether they will stack up but I do know that if they don’t then when the reconciliation happens in 2024, any shortfall has to be met and Labor would meet that through buyback,” he said.

A spokesman for Water Minister David Littleproud said the Government was “confident that it will deliver the Basin Plan on time and in full and meet its recovery targets by 30 June 2019”.