Allegations of water theft get the blood boiling but there’s an even bigger question here: will we continue to allow vested interests to influence decision making and suck our rivers dry?
8th Aug, 2017
ABOVE: In 2016, the Murray turned green from a putrid algal bloom stretching over 1000 km from Albury to Mildura.
Some readers might remember that we exposed these dodgy dealings in the Darling River in our newsletter back in September 2016, but it took the Four Corners program to blow the lid off the issue. The reaction has been huge.
This article is from Issue 28 of Environment Victoria News. You can read the full version and download it here >>
We always knew the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to revive the basin’s rivers and wetlands was going to be a long haul. Five years after it became law, we are stuck about two-thirds of the way to the water recovery target of 3200 billion litres, and the political momentum has been against us.
But in July this year, a TV exposé drew much-needed attention to the issue, reinvigorating our campaign.
The ABC’s Four Corners aired explosive allegations that big industrial cotton irrigators in NSW had engaged in illegal water use, tampering with meters and siphoning off billions of litres of precious water meant to flow downstream to Victoria and South Australia.
Even worse, the NSW government’s rules make much of the excessive pumping legal, allowing irrigators to help themselves to water purchased with public money that is supposed to restore the Darling and the once-mighty Murray to health.
Five separate inquiries have been announced, but they still may not get to the bottom of what has been going on. Unfortunately, they are not looking at all the other pressure points that are stopping the plan from realising its potential.
Upstream irrigators have been accused of stealing billions of litres of water that was bought with public money to benefit the environment in Victoria and South Australia.
To give one example, our own Victorian government has been chipping away at the water recovery target and environmental outcomes of the plan. It is proposing a whole raft of untried and untested environmental works and rule changes to reduce the volume of water returned to rivers.
Their proposals have been described as taking policy into ‘uncharted waters’, and the eminent Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists is getting very concerned indeed about the outcomes.
Not just about NSW. Victoria also suffers when greedy cotton growers take water meant for rivers and wildlife. #4Corners #MurrayDarling pic.twitter.com/nGdJIBQmXG
— Environment Victoria (@EnviroVic) July 24, 2017
No one can say how these projects will work or what the results will be. The Wentworth Group is calling for a rethink of how the $13 billion attached to the Basin Plan is spent. They want to see less reliance on engineering solutions and more focus on helping communities adjust to a future with less water, building resilience to climate change.
Suddenly, with the political fallout from the Four Corners allegations, calls such as this are getting more attention and support. So let’s seize the moment!
With your help, we’re calling on Minister Lisa Neville and the Victorian government to show leadership and recommit to implementing the Basin Plan on time and in full.
That means moving away from untested offset projects and giving our rivers what they actually need – real water flowing past their banks.