Bill shock: $6 million fee for no water

HUNDREDS of customers with Australia’s largest rural water corporation are paying almost $6 million in water bills each year, despite not owning or having any water delivered.

HUNDREDS of customers of Australia’s largest rural water corporation are paying almost $6 million in water bills each year, despite not owning or having any water delivered.

Goulburn Murray Water has hundreds of customers who have sold their water or unwittingly bought properties encumbered with delivery shares that incur annual infrastructure fees of $2890 each.

The situation has deteriorated to the point where these dry customers have stopped paying their bills, accounting for a third of GMW’s $12 million in bad debts.

Victorian Farmers Federation water council chairman Richard Anderson said he felt sorry for customers who had bought properties without knowing there were delivery shares attached.

“But the rest of us (irrigators) aren’t going to bankroll them,” Mr Anderson said.

GMW uses the annual fees to cover the cost of maintaining and renewing 6300km of channels and 900km of pipes.

Finding a solution has been made worse by Australian Competition and Consumer Commission rules that anyone wanting to terminate delivery shares must pay an exit fee of no more than 10 times the annual charge. Operators are free to charge less. Customers face a termination charge of $43,880 a delivery share in Shepparton and $28,960 a delivery share in other districts, on top of any unpaid fees to GMW.

The Federal Government’s buyout and transfer of 588,000 megalitres of irrigators’ water to the environment has exacerbated the situation, cutting the volume of water entitlements held by GMW irrigators from 1.58 millionML in 2005 to about 990,000ML today.

Many irrigators sold their water entitlement to the Commonwealth, but failed to extinguish unwanted delivery shares.

GMW analysis shows since 2007, when water was unbundled to create delivery shares, just 696 delivery shares have been terminated, mostly as part of the GMW Connections modernisation works.

Just 95.6 shares were extinguished by customers who paid the 10-fold exit fee, leaving an estimated 2000 more unwanted delivery shares that would cost about $60 million to terminate.

Mr Anderson said there was easy solution to the problem, but said he and many other irrigators had warned action needed to be taken, with the Victorian Government’s own 2016 Water Plan calling for urgent action.

Water Minister Lisa Neville has recently launched a review into delivery shares, which most irrigators say will not be completed before November’s State Election.