Murray-Darling Basin crisis: no water to flush rivers

Murray-Darling caretakers don’t have water available for environmental flows in north.

Environment Minister Sussan Ley. Picture: Brian Cassey

The Murray-Darling river system faces catastrophe this summer ­because the federal body in charge of its health does not have any water available to conduct major ­environmental flows in the north of the basin.

Environment Minister Sussan Ley told The Australian that, ­because of the “severe” drought, there was no option of repeating efforts to replenish the northern river system.

“Because there’s been no major rain since 2016, the watering that the … agencies have done in the last two years cannot be continued,” Ms Ley said.

The minister and state leaders are bracing the public for ­horrendous environmental consequences in coming months. These included sections of river drying up, mass fish deaths and native vegetation dying, Ms Ley said.

“The summer rains have failed for the last six years and the inflows in the Macquarie system have been far lower than the previou­s record lows,” she said.

“In these difficult times, communitie­s are suffering and the environment also suffers.”

Most dams feeding the ­Darling, Barwon and other northern basin rivers are at record lows and nearly empty.

 

Apart from the relatively small Chaffey Dam in NSW, which is at 23 per cent of capacity, all others are at 10 per cent or less.

As the Bureau of Meteorology predicts that the drought will ­continue over coming months, the Environmental Water ­Holder is ­implementing extreme ­measures.

A source familiar with the problem said the commonwealth organisation was deciding which wetlands classified as internationally significant might have to be left to go dry.

Among the environmental assets­ at risk are the Narran Lakes, a fauna-rich set of wetlands and swamps fed by the Narran River in the north of NSW.

Ms Ley said: “It is important to understand that, as conditions are now very dry, we are simply not able to provide water to some ­important environmental sites — including the Narran Lakes, ­because we hold no water in ­storage and it has not rained.”

Ms Ley said the Environmental Water Holder would continue to assess the best use of the ­remaining water with NSW ­agencies. This could include the Gwydir region, also in northern NSW, where there was some but very limited water.

NSW Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said on Tuesday that the million fish killed in the Darling River last summer would likely be eclipsed. Mass deaths were expected on “pretty much every river system west of the divide”.

While the Environmental Water Holder — which holds huge entitlements to water purchased in ­recent years from irrigation farmers — has sufficient­ water to meet its needs in the southern basin, the situation in the north is dire.

Last year in the northern basin the Environmental Water Holder conducted an operation known as the “northern connectivity event”, and over autumn and winter­ this year ran a second one known as the “northern fish flow”.

But with dams and reservoirs in the northern basin down to 9 per cent of capacity, compared with 46 per cent in the southern basin, there is not enough for a further environmental flow of the same magnitude.

The source said the only water that had allowed the rivers in the northern basin to continue ­flowing in the past two years had been from the Environmental Water Holder. But with reserves so low and water unobtainable in the northern basin, the capacity to do so again had been exhausted.

The agency has never had to buy water on the spot market. ­It has been able to meet its duties to maintain the health of the river system through its permanent water entitlements.

But irrigators in the northern basin are getting hardly any alloc­ations at all because of empty dams, so there is virtually no water on the market.

“Buying water or leasing water in storage is not currently possible,” Ms Ley said.

The implications for agriculture from the intensifying drought are also expected to be severe, according­ to new forecasts from the federal government’s agricultural economics think tank.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences points to mediocre expected crops in the south but sharp declines in the north.

ABARES is warning that, while agriculture in the southern part of the basin is looking more optim­istic, it will still be well below long-term averages.

The outlook for the northern region is extreme, the agency report­s. A decline in production of nearly 30 per cent is forecast as many farmers give up even trying to grow water-intensive crops such as cotton, with little water available at all and high prices on the spot market.

Crop production deteriorated in regions across NSW and Queensland due to unfavourable growing conditions over winter, ABARES said this week.

“Crop production in these states is forecast to be very much below average,” it said.

The area planted to summer crops is forecast to fall by 28 per cent in 2019—20 to about 758,000ha, with production of grain sorghum, cotton and rice all forecast to fall.

In a budget estimates hearing in parliament, Mr Marshall said: “Last summer it was estimated around one million fish were lost. On all of the advice I have received from my department, it’s fair to say that we are going to see many more than that lost this summer — of both native fish and introduced species as well.”

Department of Primary ­Industries director-general Scott Hansen told the committee that it would not just be the Barwon-Darling river system or the ­Menindee Lakes affected this time but several river systems.

“We have continued to say the forecasts for this summer present a more challenging environment than what we saw last summer and as a result we can expect to see greater fish kills, not just for the Barwon-Darling but across the rest of the state in our river systems because of a continued lack of rain,” Mr Hansen said. “(This will affect) the Lower Darling, the Namoi, Macquarie and Lachlan catchments in the early part of the summer, as well as the Barwon-Darling, Border Rivers and Gwydir if current conditions continue.”