Murray Darling Basin water recovery: What new report reveals about communities

Irrigators dismissed the Murray Darling Basin’s Authority’s Basin Plan conclusion that recovering 2135GL had “little to no” community impacts.

National Irrigators Council analysis shows the South Australian irrigation community around Berri has lost 31 per cent of its water under the Basin Plan.

Stripping 2135 gigalitres from irrigators to boost environmental flows has “had little to no discernible impact on community condition, wellbeing or cohesion”, says the authority charged with overseeing the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

“Even in highly irrigation-dependent communities, the contribution of the reforms was not measurable relative to other factors affecting social conditions,” the MDBA reported in its 2025 Basin Plan Evaluation, released on Thursday morning.

“At a Basin scale, economic and social indicators are trending upwards, although there is variability between regions at a local government scale.”

Irrigators pre-empted the report’s findings by issuing a media release on Wednesday warning any Basin-wide analysis of the Plan’s impacts failed to recognise the damage done to smaller towns.

National Irrigators Council chief executive Zara Lowien said: “We know the most severe impacts are felt at a local community level, and within specific industries, but these impacts get smoothed out when the assessment zooms to the Basin-scale.”

“We know not all communities have the same experience, and if you zoom out far enough, any problems appear to go away, making it easier for governments to brush off community concerns because of other reasons, but that doesn’t change the reality of those living it.”

National Irrigators Council CEO Zara Lowien, who runs a Bellata irrigation property with husband Grant, says the MDBA’s evaluation of the basin plan fails to zoom in on the real impacts.

The NIC’s own analysis of four irrigation communities, using census and the MDBA’s own data, found:

BERRI in South Australia was stripped of 31 per cent of its water under the Basin Plan, which led to agricultural employment dropping by 52 per cent and the area under irrigation by 25 per cent;

WAKOOL in NSW lost 38 per cent of its water, which led to a 66 per cent decline in its rural workforce and a 34 per cent reduction in irrigated land;

COLLARENEBRI in northern NSW lost two-thirds of its water, 52 per cent of its farm workforce and 66 per cent of its irrigated land; and

DIRRANBANDI in southern Queensland lost 25 per cent of its water, 10 per cent of its rural workforce and 25 per cent of its irrigated land.

But MDBA did recognise that while the population of the Basin was increasing, “smaller, remote, agricultural communities are more likely to be growing slowly or declining”.

In drilling down to the Southern Basin, where the bulk of the environmental water has been purchased, the MDBA found that from 2009 to 2022 total agricultural business turnover was about “0.7 per cent lower and irrigated agricultural business turnover about 1.8 per cent lower than it would have been without water recovery”.

Across the Basin, the MDBA found “most of the changes in economic conditions in the Basin are due to factors other than water recovery.

“Larger and more diverse regional centres in the Basin have largely adjusted to less water. In some smaller and more remote irrigation-dependent communities, water recovery has generated adjustment pressures, particularly where overall market conditions are also influencing change.”

The 2025 evaluation also found:

GROSS regional production grew from just under $210bn in 2011 to just over $230bn in 2021, an increase of 11.5 per cent;

BUSINESS turnover increased from about $170bn in 2002 to $350bn in 2022; and

GROSS value of irrigated agricultural production grew in real terms from $7.7bn in 2007–08, when water recovery commenced, to $9.8bn in 2020–21, a 27 per cent increase, which was measured against a low base at the end of the millennium drought.