Basin’s man-made flood plan: 80,000ML a day at SA border

A man-made flood every five years, similar to what we are experiencing now, is “madness” says the Victorian Farmers Federation.

Shops are sandbagged as Shepparton floods. Picture: David Crosling

The massive flow of water down the Murray River and its tributaries this week has just reached 80,000 megalitres a day at the South Australian border, mirroring the man-made flood target the Albanese government wants to deliver every fifth year.

As the Productivity Commission reported in 2018 Commonwealth and state environmental water managers must push 150,000ML a day out of Upper Murray, Goulburn, Murrumbidgee and Darling Rivers, to lift the SA border flow to the 80,000ML/day target set in the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Yet reaching the SA border target requires NSW and Victorian governments to strike deals to flood at least 6000 properties along the Basin’s southern rivers, under what the basin plan calls the removal of “constraints strategy”, using environmental water to turn high-flow events into man-made floods.

The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder already has 1990GL in hand, with another 85GL to be delivered under the Plan’s baseline target, plus an extra 450GL to meet the SA government’s demands.

But as landholders throughout the southern Murray Darling Basin have discovered this week, the impact of natural floods is costly enough, let alone dealing with even more frequent man-made events.

“These numbers have been dreamt up with no understanding of what impact it will have on local communities – to date we have huge areas of farms and homes under water and this number is increasing,” Victorian Farmers Federation water council chairman Andrew Leahy said.

“We had the Prime Minister in the region talking about flood recovery, but these Basin Plan targets will flood us deliberately rather than naturally.

“The Commonwealth says it wants to help us, but a man-made flood every five years with something like what we are experiencing is madness. The MDBA is living in a modelled world, but we live in the real world and are left wearing the impacts.”

But Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek is forging ahead with recovering more water, telling The Weekly Times “I’ve been clear from the start that nothing is off the table - including strategic, voluntary buybacks”.

Following last week’s meeting of water ministers in Canberra the MDB Authority released a communique stating “as a matter of priority, the Commonwealth will work with relevant communities and Basin states on options to bridge the remaining gap in water recovery, including through strategic purchase, and to consider carefully opportunities to achieve the 450GL”.

Victorian Water Minister Harriet Shing said “Victoria would not support any recovery method that negatively impacts communities and increases water prices. The legislation does not allow buyback towards the additional 450GL.”

Federal Opposition water spokeswoman Perin Davey said “to some people the 450GL and 80,000 megalitres per day are just numbers, however for our people in the Basin these types of flows are a major natural disaster and it’s time the Albanese government listen to the people on the ground who are in the firing line of this madness”.

“I don’t believe The Labor Party would deliberately flood people yet the Basin Plan modelling targets the flows we are currently witnessing. It is high time we review this modelling as we are doing other scientific reviews.”