Lower Darling farmers just want their fair share of water

Farmer Alan Whyte is sick of all the political shenanigans with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

Citrus farmer Alan Whyte in the Lower Darling River near Pooncarie. Picture: David Geraghty.

On the Lower Darling River north of Wentworth, irrigated citrus farmer Alan Whyte admits he is sick of all the political shenanigans with the five-year-old $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

To Mr Whyte, who needs water from cotton farms near Bourke to reach his southern NSW farm to grow his $1.5 million export orange and mandarin crop every year, the plan is much more than mere politics.

“It’s not perfect — it has its flaws including it almost ignores the Lower Darling, but at least we’ve got the plan to work with as a start,” he said.

“So I think we should stick with it — too much political capital and compromise has been put into the plan to abandon it now — and work to make it better; all we want down here is a healthy Darling River that still flows.”

All along the banks of the Murray and Darling rivers, farmers agree with Mr Whyte.

The refrain is almost universal; an appeal to politicians not to let interstate bickering or political party sniping — or the South Australian election — derail a complex scheme to share Australia’s biggest water system between the environment, irrigators and river communities, that is essentially working.

But the rivers in both southern Queensland and northern NSW are where the biggest problems with the plan lie; irrigators deliberately tampering or turning off water meters, building levee banks to divert more water on to their crops without approval, and even stealing water paid for by taxpayers to improve river health.

The direct impact on inland communities like Wilcannia and Menindee further south along the Darling River is already revealing itself this summer, with below average rainfall at the system’s headwaters.

At Louth, blue green algae blooms have appeared.

At Wilcannia, the river has stopped flowing.

Now no more water is flowing into the Menindee Lakes that supply water to the Lower Darling and Mr Whyte’s citrus trees.

It’s a situation that threatens the viability of his 65ha of citrus trees that produce 2000 tonnes of oranges and mandarins for the Chinese and Japanese market annually.

Some 70 other families, 50 properties, 250,000 sheep and five other farms with grapes and citrus trees — all between Menindee and Wentworth — are in the same predicament.

“While illegal pumping up north is wrong — and they should be prosecuted — the bigger long-term issue is rule changes that allow cotton farmers and northern irrigators in dry years to take a greater share of the water; that’s what really stops the Darling down here flowing,” Mr Whyte said.