Murray Darling Basin water take: States either unpunished or unmetered

Queensland irrigators’ water use goes unmeasured, while those in South Australia go unpunished for “overusing” the Murray Darling Basin’s flows.

All water taken from the Murray Darling Basin must be metered by June 2025.

South Australia has prosecuted just one irrigator for illegally taking unallocated water in 2019-20, despite threatening to impose overuse penalties totalling $15 million on about a dozen Murray River pumpers.

The Murray Darling Basin Authority released its 2019-20 Compliance Compact Review last week, which showed South Australia prosecuted just one irrigator for taking unallocated water in 2019-20 compared to 26 prosecutions in NSW, 15 in Victoria, with none in the ACT and Queensland.

SA Water Minister David Speirs has repeatedly stated the 2019-20 penalties had not been waived, but is yet to release any detail on what action he has been taken.

Meanwhile, one of Victoria’s largest irrigators, Brownport Almonds, pleaded guilty to two charges of unauthorised water take last week.

Lower Murray Water brought the prosecution against Brownport Almonds after warnings and a formal caution for unauthorised take over the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.

The charges related to taking water on 147 occasions when Brownport did not have the water in its allocation account, a very similar situation to what occurred in South Australia.

Mildura Magistrates Court ordered Brownport Almonds to pay costs and donations to charities of $47,500, while placing it on six-month good behaviour bonds for both guilty pleas.

But while penalties are being imposed the MDBA is still trying to ensure all basin states meet their commitments to ensuring all water taken from the basin is metered by June 2025 under the compact.

Its compact review found:

SOUTH Australia had good metering standards and compliance.

NSW requires all large surface water pumps to be metered from December 1 this year (greater than 100mm in diameter) and has substantially improved its ability to detect and respond to water theft. The NSW Government has been unable to pass regulations through Parliament’s Upper House, which would licence floodplain harvesting.

QUEENSLAND has committed to licence all water taken as overland flows and standardise the measurement for on-farm storages by the end of next year. However the MDBA “remains concerned with the time it is taking to publish a work program to improve the transparency of information about water take”.

The SA Department for Environment and Water spokesman said “South Australia has the highest percentage of metered offtakes across the Murray-Darling Basin”, citing MDBA data from 2015-16, which showed just 5 per cent of the state’s irrigators’ water use was unmetered, compared to 16 per cent in Victoria, 34 per cent in NSW and 68 per cent in Queensland.

MORE

OLD DAMS BLOCKING FLOW TO DARLING

EXPERTS’ WARNING AS FARMLAND PRICES SOAR