- The Australian
- December 01, 2012
But Lobban knows this scene of bucolic bliss will not last.
Like hundreds of other farmers on the Victorian and NSW banks of the Murray between the Hume Weir and Echuca, the Browns Plains cattleman is set to become collateral damage in the environmental battle to save Australia's biggest river system.
Yet Lobban is not an irrigation farmer, worried about suffering the loss of vital water needed to grow rice, grapes, or cotton.
Instead, he and his neighbours are set to bear the brunt of the massive new floods of water to be released down the Murray from the Hume Weir, above Albury, at a volume and intensity 60 per cent above present levels, in an effort to restore river health.
"Under the (Murray Darling Basin) plan, we know there will be flooding, that a lot of our flood plains will be lost from productive use and that access to many of our other paddocks will become difficult if not often impossible," Lobban says.
"That's bad enough, but what is even worse is the uncertainty and the confusion because we know so little and there have been so many different dates mentioned as to when this will start.
"People are really concerned about what their future is. The government must tell us as a matter of priority how they are going to deliver this water, how many times a year will we be flooded, how long the water will sit on our land and when it will all happen."
In its final form and with another $1.7 billion added to its mounting $12bn cost to the taxpayer, the hard-fought plan - designed to rescue the Murray-Darling Basin, its wetlands, rivers and trees from slow environmental degradation and death caused by over-extraction of its water by irrigators - was finally passed by federal parliament this week.
Outrage from basin rural communities, which just two years ago were burning copies of draft proposal in fear of the death of their irrigation farms and country towns, has become much more muted.
Concerns that most of the 2750 gigalitres (billion litres) of water to be returned to the environment to improve river health would be taken away from productive farms via government irrigation entitlement buyouts have largely disappeared.
Instead, the plan guarantees that most of the water buybacks of the past, which at their peak gave billionaire farmer and water baron John Kahlbetzer and his Twynam group a windfall $303m from the federal government in 2009 in exchange for 240GL of water rights, are largely over.
Under the plan passed into law this week, less than 9 per cent (239GL) of the extra water that will now be available to flow unused down the river system will be obtained by further buybacks.
Of the rest of the 2750GL flow to be put back into rivers before 2019, 1577GL has already been secured through purchases or engineering and infrastructure gains.
The rest will be obtained or "saved" by the states returning water to the environment more effectively (650GL) or through federal on-farm and river infrastructure water efficiency projects, such as lining irrigation canals or converting on-farm water delivery open channels to pipes.
It is the move away from buybacks that has meant the florid rhetoric of the past about farmers walking off parched land and the basin food bowl turning into a dust bowl has been largely replaced by grudging acceptance that Environment Minister Tony Burke's final version of the Murray-Darling Basin plan is not too bad.
The Ricegrowers Association of Australia called it the "least worst" outcome from the five-year process. "We have worked very hard through the entire basin plan process to ensure that we get a balanced outcome which minimises the impact on our businesses, our industry and our communities," ricegrowers president Les Gordon says. "While there are several positives for our members in this plan, there are still some substantial risks which we will need to watch closely as it is implemented."
National Irrigators Council chief executive Tom Chesson agrees that the final plan is better than its previous versions.
But he disputes that the lack of any outcry this week means the result is a good one for rural communities or the river system.
"Can we live with it? Perhaps, if it is implemented and delivered properly," Chesson says.
"But the feeling is much more that our people are just exhausted by it all. This plan has being going on now for five years and they just want to get on with it.
"And they are sick and tired of not being listened to when they tell the government that practically this environmental water can't all be delivered without flooding people's homes or can't be done at all, and Tony Burke just saying all the time that the computer model says yes."
Causing the most angst among irrigators and farmers such as Lobban is the 11th-hour decision by Burke to deliver the agreed 2750GL of water back down the river and an additional 450GL from 2015 by changing long-established rules governing the Murray's flow.
At present a maximum of 25,000 megalitres (million litres) of water a day is released from the Hume Weir because any more would flood farms and homes.
But in Burke's determination to save the river while preserving food production and limiting political outrage, he has decided to relax these flow constraints.
Computer modelling by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has shown that more key environmental targets, such as keeping the Murray mouth open nine years out of 10 and watering the Barmah red gum forests and its wetlands, can be achieved if a set amount water is released from Hume Weir at a faster flow rate and in bigger parcels than if it is let out more gradually and slowly.
But the practicalities of such changes, and their impact on third parties, are stark. The agreed new rate of release of 40,000 ML a day several times a year, mimicking major natural floods, will inundate dozens of properties between Albury and Echuca.
Farmers fear productive land will be lost, river bank erosion will be rife, internal bridges and roads flooded, and that some may have to abandon their land.
The consequences will necessitate compensation payments and compulsory acquisition of worst-affected properties, says Lobban, president of the Murray River Action Group.
He says other practical difficulties in delivering the water allocated in the plan are also being ignored.
Farmers around Echuca and in the Riverina ask how the fast water flows will be able to get around the Barmah Choke, a rock outcrop in the middle of the Murray upstream of Echuca.
They ask if it will be blown up or circumvented by a diversion channel, in the name of river health.
Burke says all of these problems will be addressed and solved during the next year. But he does not believe the plan is impractical even though how to get all the new environmental water to the river mouth has not been worked out in advance of it being passed into law.
"I think all these fears will be well and truly eased over time," Burke said yesterday.
"Some people (on the river) will welcome additional inundation, as long as they know when it will be and how long it will last. None of those decisions has been made.
"But what we have ended up with is a plan that is better than the earlier ones.
"It is more expensive, but by removing (flow) constraints and (not proceeding) with the straight-out purchase of water from irrigators we have ended up with better environmental outcomes and made sure basin communities don't take a hit."
No comments:
Post a Comment