Canberra strips NSW irrigators of water rather than own backyard
The Australian Capital Territory Government has failed to deliver any water from its catchments in return for $85 million of the Commonwealth’s Murray Darling Basin Plan funding.
THE Australian Capital Territory Government has stripped its 4.9 gigalitre contribution to the Murray Darling Basin Plan out of NSW irrigation communities, rather than finding the water in its own backyard.
The MDB Authority’s latest summary of water recovery shows the territory government has failed to deliver on its target of delivering 4.9GL towards boosting the basin’s environmental flows from within its “southern basin ACT zone”.
That failure is reinforced in the ACT’s Water Resource Plan, submitted to the MDB Authority in December last year, which states the “4.9GL shared reduction amount has not been completed for accounting purposes on 1 July 2019”.
The Resource Plan reveals the ACT has implemented a stopgap measure of buying water “in the NSW Murrumbidgee SDL (Sustainable Diversion Limit) resource unit, rather than in the ACT SDL resource unit.”
Meanwhile the ACT has been granted $85 million of Commonwealth basin plan funding to implement water quality projects, without delivering any water savings for the environment.
When asked about the failure to deliver water from within its own catchments, ACT Environment Minister Mick Gentleman’s office told The Weekly Times “the Australian and ACT Government’s remain committed to complete recovery of water in relation to the shared reduction”.
Minister Gentleman said the 4.9GL the ACT had bought from the NSW Murrumbidgee was already being used for environmental watering downstream of Burrinjuck Dam, “which means that the most important aspect of this recovery has been achieved”.
Yet section 6.05 of the Federal Water Act 2007 requires the ACT to make a contribution from its own catchments, which include the Cotter, Gudgenby, Naas, Molonglo rivers, plus a stretch of the Upper Murrumbidgee River.
It now appears the ACT Government is seeking amendments to the Federal Water Act, so that it can count the 4.9GL it stripped from NSW irrigation communities towards its Basin Plan contribution.
The ACT’s Water Resource Plan states it is “considering options, including seeking a future Basin Plan amendment to fully account for this previous provision of (NSW) water”.
The ACT’s actions have incensed NSW irrigators.
“It’s especially galling the ACT wants special treatment when it wouldn’t support NSW and Victoria last month on more flexibility for environmental projects so less water has to be recovered from irrigators,” NSW Irrigators Council interim chief executive Claire Miller said.
“All Basin communities are expected to share the pain of adjusting to less water for the sake of the environment.
“Canberra should be setting the example, not making things worse by taking more water away from growing food and fibre.”
Victorian Farmers Federation water council chairman Richard Anderson said the ACT’s actions were not “in the spirit of the plan”.
“They’re doing nothing but buying water off someone else,” Mr Anderson said. “Next thing we’ll have South Australia doing that.”
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