NIC chairman Gavin McMahon says his Council also wants to ensure the billions of dollars in funding, which underpins the Commonwealth’s water reforms, can be directed towards projects that provide good environmental outcomes for rivers and communities.
But he said the Basin Plan still lacked an environmental watering plan and relied on “faith” rather than sound water management principles.
He said an environmental watering plan would help determine where environmental water was coming from and is being directed to, what environmental outcomes would be achieved and if those goals are being met through timely and effective water use.
“What we’re saying to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, which is the largest water holder in the system, is; what’s your plan for the next year?” he said.
“As irrigators we’re required to provide our plans on a yearly basis so that everyone has a good understanding of what our plan is and there’s transparency.”
Mr McMahon said one of the Plan’s biggest weaknesses was its inability to successfully monitor the success or otherwise, of any environmental watering.
He said more certainty was also needed around water apportionment to easily identify exactly which valleys the SDLs would be taken from and finite volumes for each valley.
Communities like the southern Basin face losing about 1000GLs under the current arrangements which would devastate agricultural production by up to 50 percent in places like the Murrumbidgee and impact severely on the ongoing survival of those economies.
Mr McMahon said knowing that information would give those communities the capacity to plan for the future with greater certainty.
“If you asked communities up and down the Basin, and the businesses that operate within those communities, how things will look for them in 2019 when the Plan’s due to start, they won’t know,” he said.
“They don’t know what the actual volume of water will be that will come out of their communities or how it will be acquired.
“There’s nothing in the Plan which clearly says, if a certain area of the Basin or that community is affected, ‘this is what we’re going to do to help you’ or is it just bad luck for them.
“Taking water from those communities not only affects farmers and agricultural production but also other businesses, house prices and schedules for shire rates so they can function properly by knowing what money they have coming in from year to year.
“These are the indirect consequences of water leaving these communities but we’ve not seen anything that says, ‘this is what we’ll do for you’.”
Mr McMahon said Water Minister Tony Burke has been accessible and engaging while conducting his consultation role with an open door policy.
“Many people have seen the Minister and he’s also visited many areas and engaged with people and spoken to nearly everyone during this process,” he said.
“That’s given him a really good understanding of the issues.
“But at the end of the day, we’d like to see an outcome that’s well negotiated and well-balanced and doesn’t destroy Basin communities which would be well appreciated by many people.”
Mr McMahon’s parting comment was a reminder of the economic contribution made to the nation, from rural communities and businesses throughout the complex and iconic, river system.
He said irrigated agriculture played a major role in contributing to the GDP of each State within the river system and the overall national economy.
“It needs to be borne in mind that irrigators do help to drive those economies in a big way,” he said.
“What we’d like to say is, if you take water away from those communities you also impact on economic generation and prosperity.
“Mining will come and go and that may take 50 years but these communities are always going to be key economic drivers for the nation.
“They create employment in and out of the Basin and generate export income for the nation.
“Our work creates food and other produce which in turn creates job and money that goes around the whole economy but that often gets forgotten during this whole debate.”
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