Murray Darling Basin: Environmental water holders block irrigators from share
Irrigators are being squeezed out, with environmental water holders hoarding two million megalitres in the southern Murray Darling Basin.
Commonwealth and state environmental water holders have hoarded almost two million megalitres of water in the Murray Darling Basin’s southern dams – equal to four times the volume held in Sydney Harbour.
Murray and Murrumbidgee storages are almost at capacity, leaving little room to capture more inflows to boost irrigators’ allocations on the back of Bureau of Meteorology forecasts of a wet spring.
The lack of storage space means water is spilling from dams and boosting river flows, without it being deducted from the environment’s accounts, angering irrigators, who worry it’s a deliberate strategy.
Victorian Farmers Federation water council chairman Andrew Leahy said rather than just holding onto their water in storage and getting “a free kick”, spills should be deducted from the environment’s accounts.
All up the Commonwealth, NSW and Victorian environment water holders, have hoarded 1.92 million megalitres in the southern basin storages, including:
593,000 megalitres on the Murrumbidgee 2021-22 allocations, plus carryover and rules based water.
467,000 megalitres in the NSW Murray, across Hume, Dartmouth, Menindee and Lake Victoria.
432,000 megalitres in Victoria’s share of the Murray storages
428,000 megalitres in the Victoria’s Goulburn system.
For NSW and Victorian Murray irrigators the situation is made worse by the fact they owe the Barmah Millewa Environmental Water Allowance account another 663,000 megalitres, bringing the total owed and in storage to 2.583 million megalitres.
NSW Murray irrigators’ general security allocations will remain at 30 per cent until the water is repaid, while those in Victoria make staged repayments on the back of their high reliability water share allocations, which are sitting at 52 per cent.
NSW Murray Irrigation Limited chairman Phillip Snowden said environmental water holders were now “such big volume players” that their management was having “third-party impacts on irrigators”, prompting him to call on the Basin’s Inspector-General of Water Compliance Troy Grant to investigate.
An analysis of the NSW Water Register has shown Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder Hilton Taylor and the Southern Connected Basin Environmental Water Committee have even hoarded water allocated to their Lower Darling River entitlements last autumn, rather than using it to revive the ailing waterway’s flows.
NSW Water Register records show that by April 15 this year 41,990 megalitres had been allocated to Lower Darling water access licences held by the CEWH and the SCBEW Committee.
At the time the Lower Darling River’s flows had slumped to just 190 megalitres a day.
Instead of using the water to boost the Darling River’s flows, Mr Taylor and the SCBEW Committee transferred their Lower Darling allocations up river, into the Murrumbidgee and Murray storages - Blowering, Burrinjuck and Hume Dams – where it was added to their existing reserves.
On May 27 a water access licence registered under the SCBEW Committee, overseen by the NSW Government, transferred their first 4300ML parcel of Lower Darling allocation water to the Murrumbidgee.
The SCBEW Committee and the CEWH then proceeded to transfer another 37,690ML of their Darling River allocations into Upper Murray storages in the leadup to the June 30 carryover deadline.
The 41,990ML could have been added to a 60,000-megalitre pulse of operational water the MDB Authority put down the Lower Darling to top up Lake Victoria in May and June, to meet South Australia’s needs before the start of the 2021-22 season.
Darling River advocate Graeme McCrabb the 60,000-megalitre pulse had not been enough to lift flows to the 5000-7000 megalitres/day needed to allow golden perch and other natives fish to move up and down the river.
“The question remains - if you haven’t used this 42,000 megalitres, what are you going to gain by holding onto it?” Mr McCrabb said.
“They’re (environmental water holders) risk averse and scared of pressure being put on ministers.”
Ultimately Mr McCrabb pointed out that environmental watering should be mimicking what would have occurred “if we weren’t here”, whereby the floods that hit the northern Basin in March were used to help boost the Lower Darling autumn and early winter flows.
Mr Taylor’s office said the Lower Darling water it transferred to Murray storages last season was “now available to be transferred back in”.
But National Irrigators Council chairman Jeremy Morton said transfers back down the Murray to the Darling could only occur when the Barmah Choke was open.
A NSW Government spokeswoman said “in deciding to trade a proportion of the Lower Darling TLM water in 2020-21, SCBEWC considered the proportion of water that was needed to help maintain the health of the Lower Darling, forecast inflows to the Menindee Lakes from upstream tributaries (with the Lakes subsequently approaching full supply and full allocation being available to water users) and environmental demand in other areas of the southern connected Basin”.
In releasing his 2021-22 CEWH watering plan last Friday, Mr Taylor said “we start the 2021–22 water year with the highest volume of Commonwealth environmental water carried over to date (as compared to last year, which was the lowest in a decade).
“If wet conditions continue across the Basin, this will present both risks and opportunities.”
Those risks include flooding farmers’ and other landholders’ riverside properties, raising questions as to whether the CEWH and state water holders can use their hoarded water, when the flow just downstream of Yarrawonga weir is capped at 15,000ML a day to prevent flooding.
As for the VFF”s argument that spills should be deducted from the environments accounts the CEWH’s office stated: “any water spilling now, would have been spilling before those entitlements were recovered as environmental water”.
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