Shing halts floodplain works: Fears federal funding will be cut

Victoria’s four largest floodplain restoration projects, delivering 58GL in water efficiencies, have been halted, risking a major federal water buyout.

Work to install regulators, pumps and small levees to direct environmental flows across 14,000ha of Murray River floodplains has been halted.

Victorian Water Minister Harriet Shing has halted work on four Murray floodplain restoration projects that promised to deliver 58 gigalitres of environmental water efficiency gains towards the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Covid restrictions and other delays have meant Victoria has fallen way behind on delivering all nine projects, worth 72.5GL in efficiency gains, which under a $320 million funding agreement with the federal government must be delivered by June 30, 2024.

The failure to deliver the four biggest floodplain projects by the deadline clears they way for the federal government to make up the shortfall by buying the 58GL out of Victorian Murray River irrigation communities - the Sunraysia, Robinvale or the Torrumbarry systems.

Irrigators are already warning such a buyout would be catastrophic for their communities.

Water Minister Harriet Shing‘s office said “given the funding uncertainty and time constraints the Commonwealth has imposed on these projects, we’re now focusing works on the five sites where the regulatory approval process is already underway.

Victorian Water Minister Harriett Shing. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Valeriu Campan

But those five sites - Belsar Yngera, Hattah north, Burra Creek, Vinifera and Nyah - deliver just 2.5GL of efficiency gains each, totalling 12.5GL.

In contrast the four suspended projects - Guttrum Benwell, Gunbower

Lindsay and Walpolla Islands - were due to deliver a total of 58GL.

Under the 2019 funding agreement with the Commonwealth, Victoria had to install regulators, pumps and small levees to direct environmental flows across 14,000ha of flood plains at the nine icon sites along the river, from the Gunbower National Park to lagoons and wetlands downstream of Mildura at Lindsay Island.

The projects were critical to boosting the efficiency of watering Murray River floodplains and wetlands, which was in turn used to cut the volume of environmental water needed under the Murray Darling Basin Plan by 605GL - under what became know as the Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment Mechanism.

Victoria had already spent more than $54 million on the design, survey and environmental assessments of its SDLAM floodplain projects.

Ms Shing has repeatedly called on federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek to be “flexible on 2024 deadline for some complex projects because they need to be co-designed with communities”.

But Minister Plibersek has refused to budge on the deadline.

National Irrigators Council chair Jeremy Morton said it was not surprising that the Victorian Government was genuinely concerned that it would not be reimbursed for these projects.

As previously reported in The Weekly Times federal and state water bureaucrats’ have warned the Murray Darling Basin Plan will fall short of its delivery target by up to 340 gigalitres, triggering a Commonwealth entitlement buyout and “a reduction in water available for consumptive use”.

Mr Morton said irrigators would “riot” if the federal government refused to extend the SDLAM deadlines for both Victoria and NSW and then waded into the water market to make up the shortfall.