Farmer anger over water volumes in storage ahead of floods

Questions are being raised about why so much water was left in Murray Basin storages as a wet winter approached.

Farmers are angry so much water was left in Murray Basin storages heading into a wet winter this year, but experts and industry leaders say the amount of water that could have been released was limited.

As water washed through what were once bountiful crops in the central Murray town of Kerang this week, retired farmer and Central Murray Environmental Floodplains Group chair Geoff Kendall said he was “very disappointed” that the alarm he sounded in August about imminent flooding went unheeded.

In a letter Mr Kendall penned to federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek on August 5, he wrote: “Our system has been so poorly managed in recent years we believe this spring we are under threat from a catastrophic disaster with major flooding of large parcels of land and infrastructure.”

In less than three months, the predicted flood would arrive on his doorstep.

Submerged crops in the Loddon River catchment after floods in October. Photo: supplied

One of the group’s major concerns was the volume of water in storage, which set the system up for a high risk of flooding ahead of expected above-average spring and summer rainfall.

“Corporate investors and speculators have been able to buy permanent water, pay an annual storage fee of $11.50 a megalitre and carry it over, taking up air space in Victorian dams and trading it for their shareholders (many foreign) to the detriment of farming families trying to produce food and fibre for this nation while hopefully making a profit for their family to live on.

“Carryover rules must change,” Mr Kendall wrote.

The group was also concerned about the volume of environmental water in carryover accounts, according to the letter.

At the start of winter, Hume and Dartmouth dams were near 95 per cent capacity and the Murray Darling Basin Authority was warning of an “increased risk of flooding”.

Records kept by the Bureau of Meteorology show that 793,000ML — 15 per cent — of the total allocated water in NSW Murray storage accounts in June had been carried over from previous seasons.

The majority of that carryover — 82 per cent — was for consumptive use, and the remainder for the environment.

In Victorian Murray storage accounts, there was 821,000ML of carryover water — 17 per cent of the total. Of that, 49 per cent was for environmental use and 47 per cent for consumptive use.

Prof. Jamie Pittock says an $864 million fund to raise low-lying infrastructure like roads and bridges to allow minor floods should be spent. Picture: Clive Hilliker

Australian National University environment and society professor Jamie Pittock said there were limitations on the volume of environmental water authorities were able to release this season.

In order to deliver water to the environment in a year when rivers are already flowing high, the NSW and Victorian governments would have to first strike deals to flood thousands of properties along the basin’s southern rivers and raise low-lying infrastructure like roads and bridges — known as “constraints”.

“Because constraints haven’t been relaxed, the Commonwealth had very limited circumstances in which it can use its environmental water to benefit the environment.

“So it can’t put the water overbank, for example, which would have been desirable in early spring this year,” Mr Pittock said.

Hundreds of millions of dollars set aside by the federal government to upgrade infrastructure to allow minor environmental floods should be spent soon, Mr Pittock said.

“The amount of money that would be flowing from the Commonwealth to regional areas, was costed in 2016 at $864 million. (That money) is sitting there, it’s waiting for the state governments to come up with coherent plans. And that sort of expenditure could help regional communities with flood recovery,” he said.

Nyah pictacchio grower and livestock farmer Rod Duffy. Picture: Else Kennedy

Rod Duffy, who farms livestock and pistachios on the Murray River at Nyah, was one of a group of landholders, backed by Swan Hill Rural City Council, who urged a release of environmental water in June to allow water to enter the Nyah-Vinifera forest on the Swan Hill reach of the Murray and create space in storages.

In a combined statement, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, NSW government and Victorian government said at the time the agencies had to carefully time any release to “avoid... unintended third party impacts”. In August the area received a pulse of water lasting about one week, followed by a longer release that has continued through September and October.

“With the dams being as full as what they were back then, and pretty accurate long range weather forecasting saying there was going to be above average rainfall right through until January, that river should have been full three months earlier,” Mr Duffy said.

The farmer was now carefully assessing the strength of the river levees on his properties as he prepared for a surge of floodwater later this week.

National Irrigators Council chair Jeremy Morton.

National Irrigators Council chair and Riverina ricegrower Jeremy Morton said he thought authorities had done a good job of managing storage at Hume Dam.

“If they’d let a whole heap of water out earlier in the year and it stopped raining, and there was an impact on water availability, people wouldn’t be happy about that, either,” Mr Morton said.

As the federal government looks to save another 450GL of water for the environment under the Basin Plan, Mr Morton said he was concerned about what that would mean for water storages if the environmental water wasn’t able to be released.

Swan Hill Councillor Nicole McKay. Picture: Supplied

Swan Hill City Councillor Nicole McKay urged water authorities to consult with local water users and enact the constraints measures.

“Environmental water, used well, could be protective against floods. Instead of sitting in a dam, waiting for a huge storm to mess the whole situation up, it would be used. All the lakes (in the Central Murray) would have been full last year, and there would have been more space in the dams,” Ms McKay said.