Basin blockage: Victoria and NSW say no to compulsory acquisition of riverside land

The Murray Darling Basin Plan cannot be delivered without reaching agreement on flooding 6000 riverside landholders’ properties.

Environmental water managers want to flood riverside landholders’ properties, such as Richard Sargood's river flats (pictured), near Corowa.

Irrigators and floodplain landholders have warned the NSW and Victorian Governments have no hope of brokering flood easements over about 6000 properties along the Murray, Goulburn and Murrumbidgee Rivers by the June 2024 deadline on delivery of the Basin Plan.

Without easements state and federal government water managers are liable for any damage to riverside properties caused by pushing large volumes of regulated environmental water down the southern rivers to meet the Basin Plan’s flow targets of up to 80,000 megalitres a day across the South Australian border.

But this week NSW Lands and Water Minister Kevin Anderson reassured riverside property owners “there will be no compulsory land acquisitions”, under his government’s Reconnecting River Country program to remove constraints, reflecting the Victorian Government’s long-held position.

Murray River Action Group chairman Richard Sargood said the NSW program proposed negotiating flood easements with landholders to allow environmental water managers to push up to 40,000ML a day down the river, from Hume to Yarrawonga.

Experience with natural Murray River floods on his Victorian property has shown Mr Sargood flows of 40,000ML a day inundate 100ha of his river flats and cut off access to the remaining 300ha.

“It’s anticipated that man-made flows up to this level would happen on average four years out of 10 and last between 7 and 21 days,” Mr Sargood said. “Improved pastures are dead after being under water for five days.

“The rhetoric around the whole concept of removing constraints is to sacrifice people at the top end (of the basin) for a supposed benefits at the end of the system.

“(But) if the state governments are saying they won’t compulsorily acquire, then they have no hope getting approval for that stretch of river.”

NSW Irrigators Council chief executive Claire Miller said it would take more than a decade to negotiate voluntary flood easements with landholders to remove constraints.

As far back as 2018 the Productivity Commission’s five-year review of the Basin Pan warned: “based on past experience with similar projects, the 2024 deadline for all constraints to be fully operational appears highly ambitious, if not unrealistic.

“Negotiations in the 2000s to secure the right to release 25,000 ML/day from Hume Dam involved negotiating legal easements with 103 landholders from Hume to Yarrawonga and took almost eight years to complete.

Yet Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Water Minister Tanya Plibersek have promised to not only deliver the Basin Plan in full, but push an extra 450,000ML down the system.

Upper Goulburn landholder Jan Beer said Labor failed to understand that extra water “just can’t be delivered”.