Murray Darling Basin: NSW to curb cold-water pollution, remove weirs and build fishways

NSW has ditched water savings ideas to boost the Murray Darling Basin, as they work to reconnect rivers and fishways.

The NSW Government has abandoned trying to find major water savings from reconfiguring the Menindee Lakes and Murrumbidgee’s Yanco Creek, turning instead to curbing the impacts of cold water pollution, building fishways, removing redundant weirs and freeing up flows.

In a move that is set to challenge green groups’ push to simply boost the Murray Darling Basin’s environmental flows, NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey has released a raft of “complimentary measures” projects that deliver ecological benefits, but very little water, under the new Better Bidgee and Better Baaka (Darling River) programs.

There are plans to install compressors, pipelines and diffusers, to reduce cold water pollution below Burrinjuck and Blowering dams, which has stifled native fish breeding along 510 km of the Murrumbidgee Valley’s waterways.

Weirs will also be removed and fishways installed along the full length of the Darling-Barwon Rivers, while 15 gigalitres of predominantly undeveloped water licences will be bought out along intersecting waterways – the, Moonie, Narran, Bokhara, Birrie, Culgoa, Warrego and Paroo.

NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey wants to free up flows, rather than just recovering more environmental water for the Darling River. Picture: Toby Zerna

Weir 32 at the Menindee Lakes will also be upgraded to improve operational control and managing adverse water quality conditions.

But the Better Bidgee and Baaka programs are only set to recover 20-30GL of water savings, well short of the 120-130GL originally proposed by the NSW Government as part of its contribution to the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism under the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

NSW had previously committed to halving the number of lakes used to store water in the Menindee system, to save 106GL, plus build a 2.5m regulator on the Murrumbidgee’s Yanco Creek to recover another 10-15GL.

Now both NSW and Victoria face being unable to meet their contributions to the 605GL SDLAM target by 2024, unless other states allow them to convert complimentary measures project, such as those put forward in NSW, into an SDLAM volume.

National Irrigators Council chairman Jeremy Morton said it was sensible to “tweak the model” to allow complementary measures to be converted into SDLAM volumes, including everything from fencing off riparian zones, to curbing cold water pollution and fishways.

“You have to find some way of scoring it from an environmental view,” Mr Morton said.

Asked if the South Australian Government would support such a move Mr Morton said he believed “too their credit they have allowed sensible change around aspects of the Basin Plan” in the past.

But with elections looming for both the South Australian and Federal Governments, NSW and Victorian water ministers know they’ve got a battle on their hands.

Irrigators fear that if other states refuse to recognise the value of complimentary measures towards the SDLAM target, then the Federal Government will come under pressure to re-enter water markets in 2024 to recover any shortfall.

Murray Irrigation Limited chairman Phillip Snowden said “we have a federal election next year and don’t know if the (Labor) Opposition will commit to not going back into the market”.