Floodplain harvesting: The arguments for and against licensing

Licensing floodplain harvesting is a contentious issue. Here Jim Cush argues the case for doing so while Chris Brooks opposes it.

The Menindee storage has benefited from major inflows and is expected to be at capacity by summer.

Floodplain harvesting must be reduced, licensed and metered, argues Jim Cush.

Floodplain harvesting must be reduced, licensed and metered, argues Jim Cush.

Here is a good news story: the Murray-Darling Basin is the wettest it’s been since 2016.

Hume and other storages are at or near full. Menindee is at 83 per cent and will be full by summer.

The Darling River was running strongly even before major floods in tributaries in March.

Irrigators captured some floodwater then, but most still flowed towards Menindee, proving even with unlimited floodplain harvesting due to the Upper House disallowances, rivers have still flowed and spilt. It puts the lie to claims the Darling will never flow again if FPH is regulated.

The status quo is not a long-term solution for anyone. Like others, we want FPH reduced to Cap and Basin Plan limits, licensed and metered, even though it means cutting FPH by up to a third.

Floods are irregular and rare. That’s why a 500 per cent account accrual limit is proposed within a rolling five-year accounting period over which FPH must not exceed annual licence volume.

In practice, it means irrigators who did not flood-plain harvest for four years could take 500 per cent of their FPH licence volume in the fifth year, but only if it is flooding.

The volume is less than unregulated FPH, and further, drought-breaking floods are protected under First Flush provisions. Rivers have to run first.

Irrigators would be happy with larger annual licences and no accrual. But even the CEWH supported licensing with the 500 per cent account limit in a June submission to NSW, because it means smaller annual licence volumes.

It said the combination would provide greater environmental protections in wet periods and enhance environmental outcomes.

General security and supplementary has been metered in northern valleys for many years. The reforms will require FPH metering, ensuring limits on take can be enforced.

Some of us wonder what the problem is with reducing, licensing and metering FPH, when the disallowances mean FPH continues unlimited.

With Menindee filling and now counted as part of the shared Murray resource, the question is why Murray allocations remain stubbornly low. NSWIC is pushing the Government to crack open the allocation blackbox to examine which policy decisions are eroding water reliability.

● Jim Cush is the chairman of NSW Irrigators Council

Rules bent to favour northern NSW irrigators

Floodplain harvesting has never been legal, writes Chris Brooks

Floodplain harvesting was illegal in 1994 under cap and it’s still illegal today.

Any attempt to increase the legal limits of take to include a volume for FPH offends the cap, the Murray Darling Basin Agreement and the Basin Plan 2012, the very laws that were put in place to protect the Murray-Darling Basin from over-extraction.

Northern NSW irrigators are desperate to see FPH licensed, while taxpayers face paying out billions in compensable ­licences if it does.

Irrigation advocacy group SRI has spent the last few years demonstrating FPH has never been legal. This was confirmed in an internal legal advice held by the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and only made public following the efforts of independent Justin Field MLC to obtain greater transparency.

The NSW Upper House inquiry into FPH provides an opportunity to publicly show the distortion and maladministration of this process.

Instead of protecting the basin, DPIE has acted in bad faith calling for potential extractions of up to 1730GL for FPH, while a leaked email shows DPIE thinks it controls the supposed independent watchdog, the Natural Resource Access Regulator.

An Independent Commission Against Corruption investigation found DPIE had not interpreted water management laws correctly and had instead favoured northern ­irrigator interests in “a misguided ­effort to redress a perceived imbalance caused by the Basin Plan’s prioritisation of the environment’s needs, which has had adverse effects on irrigators and their communities.”

We cannot continue on with one set of rules for the north and another for the south. If the people refuse to change, it’s time to change the people.

NRAR must be separated from DPIE and put under the supervision of a different portfolio that is not ­controlled by the National Party.

SRI members have had a gutful of receiving little or no allocations while they watch their water forced down the Murray River to make up for no inflows from the Darling River.

This year we sit on 30 per cent allocation despite the Hume Dam almost spilling. The Murray River is imploding, the Darling River is dying and 40 per cent of Australia’s food production, a $24 billion industry, is threatened during a global pandemic.

Our system has been broken by the maladministration of water in this state by northern sympathisers.

To read SRIs submission to the NSW Upper House Inquiry into floodplain harvesting visit https://southernriverinairrigators.com.au/

● Chris Brooks is the chairman of Southern Riverina Irrigators