Melinda Pavey says Murray Darling Basin water plan is ‘environmental vandalism’

NSW has rejected a decade of pressure to conserve water in the Murray Darling Basin, slamming the plan as “environmental vandalism”.

NSW has rejected a decade of pressure to conserve water in the Murray Darling Basin at all costs, slamming the current state of the plan as “environmental vandalism”.

In a dramatic move to end the bitter water wars, NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey told The Daily Telegraph governments got it wrong in 2012 when they carved up the river system and demanded water savings in places where it “just wasn’t possible” to do so.

“Locals told us from the start this was wrong and they were right,” she said.

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Hated by farmers, Aboriginal communities and local environmentalists, the plan to rip water out of the Northern Basin, including 106 gigalitres from the Menindee Lakes, for the sake of river health downstream in Victoria and South Australia had stalled almost since day one.

NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey has been on a listening tour of NSW river communities. Picture: Richard Dobson

Ms Pavey this month embarked on a listening tour of the NSW river communities, checking with locals from Deniliquin in the state’s south to Wilcannia in the central west.

The robust discussions included pleas to reign in water trading, better regulate usage and consult with people on the ground before greenlighting infrastructure projects that go nowhere.

“The anger has come from everywhere,” Ms Pavey said. “From the environmental movement, farmers, fishing and tourism.”

She said the rest of Australia did not “respect” the role the Menindee Lakes played in the health of the entire Murray Darling Basin until hundreds of thousands of fish died in 2019.

“We’re still committed to achieving water savings but we can’t do what the federal government and other states were asking us to do because it was environmental vandalism,” she said.

Barkandji women Pam Handy, Cindy Bates, Kathy Potter, Barbara Quayle and Cheryl Blore with landowner Rachel Strachan, at Menindee Lakes outside Broken Hill, have discussed the issues with Melinda Pavey. Picture: Richard Dobson

Minister Melinda Pavey and local Aboriginal women discuss a new water management plan. Picture: Richard Dobson

Farmer Malcolm Starritt has a property on the each of the Koondrook-Perricoota Forest near Deniliquin and has welcomed plans to build levies on his land so that when the Commonwealth releases environmental water he is not flooded out.

“They spend this money building a regulator to get water to the forest and I can’t really give consent for them to use it because it floods so much of my land,” he said.

“This is also about effective use of taxpayer money. We don’t want to be wasting millions of dollars on infrastructure that doesn’t work.”

Up north, landowner Rachel Strachan said she and other members of the Menindee Lower Darling stakeholder advisory group were “wary” of what the next proposal may be after years of failed consultation.

“We’re not too proud to support ideas,” she said. “But we won’t back something that’s going to be detrimental.”

Barkindji elder Barbara Quayle said the Menindee Lakes were “extremely high” in Aboriginal artefacts, which were as important as preserving the water flows to prevent mass fish kills.

“We’d see skull and cross bone signs on trees warning do not go near this water, this water is toxic and that wouldn’t happen if the flows were better managed,” she said.

“The Baaka (Darling River) is the lifeblood of Aboriginal people.

“It’s a bit like the body. The body needs blood to pump, the river needs water to flow.”