A cousin by marriage of the current Australian Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources David Littleproud, John Norman, finds his agricultural business practices under scrutiny.....
Showing posts with label water policy politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water policy politics. Show all posts
Friday 13 April 2018
Alleged irrigator water theft heading for the courts?
A cousin by marriage of the current Australian Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources David Littleproud, John Norman, finds his agricultural business practices under scrutiny.....
The
Guardian, 9
April 2018:
Fraud charges are
expected to be laid against one of Queensland’s biggest cotton irrigators, John
Norman, within a matter of weeks.
If the trial of the
owner-operator of Norman Farming, and former cotton
farmer of the year goes ahead, it is likely to draw attention to the
links between the irrigator’s family and that of the federal minister for
agriculture and water resources, David Littleproud.
If the charges are laid,
they will also throw the spotlight on the Queensland government’s failure
in administering a key plank of the $13bn Murray-Darling basin plan, how it
withheld critical information about the alleged crimes, and how it raises
queries as to whether it lied about its own investigation.
For the past 18 months,
an expanding team of undercover detectives, cybercrime experts and forensic
accountants have been investigating Norman’s business on the Queensland/New
South Wales border, an irrigated cotton aggregate stretching 45km north from
the McIntyre river.
The investigation has
focused on whether Norman Farming misused upwards of $25m in
Murray-Darling basin infrastructure funds that were supposed to make the
irrigator more efficient and deliver water back to the ailing river system
downstream.
The plan for the basin
is funded by the commonwealth and administered by state governments. But
allegations that the $150m Healthy Headwaters Water Use Efficiency
projects in Queensland, part of the MDB plan, lacked any genuinely independent
checks on projects, means it may have been left open to corruption.
“It’s been a
loosey-goosey slush fund helping irrigators get richer,” according to Chris
Lamey, a dry-land farmer who’s seeking compensation from Norman, his neighbour.
“It’s achieved the opposite of what was intended. There’s a lot of water not
getting into NSW now and it’s backed up in dams next door to me.”
Queensland’s covert
police investigation into Norman Farming went
public in October 2017, when dozens of major crime squad detectives holding
multiple subpoenas fanned out from Goondiwindi in early-morning high-speed
convoys, heading across the floodplain to the irrigator’s properties and
several of its contractors in and around the border river town…..
Tuesday 27 March 2018
Just because Nationsls MP for New England Barnaby Joyce is now sitting on the backbenches in disgrace doesn't mean the Turnbull Government can ignore all those dodgy water deals he made
Example of a dodgy water deal par excellence where a Cayman Islands corporation can pocket $78.8 million from a suspect water sale in the beleaguered Murray-Darling Basin........
Eastern Australia Agriculture Pty
Ltd (EAA) was
incorporated in 2007 and is based in St George, Australia. It operates as a
subsidiary of Eastern Australian
Irrigation Limited.
According to The
Courier Mail on 21 March 2018; the company is based in the tax haven of the
Cayman Islands.
The
Land reported
on 19 October2011 that; EAA shareholders are based in Grand Cayman
in the Cayman Islands. Its directors include former Ridley Corporation managing
director Matthew Bickford-Smith and former Colly Farms's grower services
manager Peter Cottle.
EEA’s portfolio
comprises two properties - “Kia Ora” (7km south of St. George) and
“Clyde”
(10km south-west of Dirranbandi) totalling 37,590ha made up of
12,800ha of cotton producing irrigation land with further areas of development
potential.
These
properties are close to the notorious water harvester,“Cubbie Station”, in the Condamine-Balonne Valley.
EAA’s entire
properties, including the water licences were reported to have been independently valued at est. $107m in 2017.
In 2017
the Turnbull Government agreed to purchase over 29
gigalitres of water for $80,041,455 from
EEA, which originally insisted on $2,200 per megalitre. But after negotiation,
the Government paid a higher price - $2,745 per megalitre.
Then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Water, Barnaby Joyce, approved the final purchase of 29,159 megalitres of OLF licences in May 2017 - 14,969 ML from “Clyde” and 14,190 from “Kia Ora”.
Department of
Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) due diligence later reduced the total volume to 28,740 megalitres and the price paid to $78,891,300.
The water purchased was
for Over Land Flow (OLF) licences, which cannot be traded between irrigators,
because they are attached to land. They have no legal status or any recognition
at a location other than where they were originally purchased. That is, there
appears to be no legal basis for the Commonwealth to ensure it gets to the
places it is intended to be used. [The Australia Institute, March 2018, “That’s
not how you haggle”, p.3]
The sale of
EAA’s OLF licences represented 74% of the value of both EAA properties.
EAA recorded a $52m gain on the sale in their 2017 Annual Report. [ibid, p.8]
The purchase appears to
be in breach of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules because it was not made
available to all licence holders in the valley…. [ibid,
p.3]
Tuesday 13 March 2018
Only a handful of NSW landowners to face court over Murray-Darling Basin water theft allegations?
ABC News, 8 March 2018:
The NSW Government will
prosecute several people over alleged water theft on the Barwon-Darling, eight
months after Four Corners investigated the issue.
WaterNSW has named the
people it is taking to the Land and Environment Court over alleged breaches of
water management rules.
They are prominent
irrigator Peter Harris and his wife Jane Harris, who own a major cotton farm
near Brewarrina in the state's north-west and were named in the Four
Corners story.
The couple have been
accused of taking water when the flow conditions did not permit it, and
breaching licence and approval conditions.
Three members of another
prominent family are also facing charges: cotton grower Anthony Barlow from
Mungindi near Moree and Frederick and Margaret Barlow.
The Barlows have been
accused of pumping during an embargo and pumping while metering equipment was
not working.
WaterNSW gave false
figures: Ombudsman
WaterNSW announced the
prosecutions an hour before the NSW Ombudsman released a scathing report saying
the agency had given the Government incorrect figures on its enforcement
actions.
The state's ombudsman,
Michael Barnes, found WaterNSW gave incorrect figures when it provided
statistics that showed there had been a significant increase in enforcements
between July 2016 and November 2017.
"The information
provided to us indicated that the updated statistical information from WaterNSW
that we'd published was significantly incorrect," he said.
"There had, in
fact, been no referrals for prosecutions and no penalty infringement notices
issued in the relevant period."
Mr Barnes said he
initiated a separate investigation after his office received complaints about
the figures, and he found WaterNSW had inflated the statistics.
"As part of our
investigation, we confirmed with Revenue NSW that no penalty infringement
notices were issued by WaterNSW in the relevant period," he said.
The ombudsman said he
raised the issue with WaterNSW, which has admitted to the mistake and
apologised.
Mr Barnes also said he
believed the error was unintentional.
The agency's CEO, David
Harris, said staff have now manually reviewed all actions taken.
"Some of the detail
WaterNSW provided was incorrect and, although it was revised, it is not
acceptable and we are acting to ensure it does not happen again," he said……
NSW
Ombudsman, Correcting the record: Investigation
into water compliance and enforcement 2007-17: A special report to Parliament
under sections 26 and 31 of the Ombudsman Act 1974, 8 March 2018, Amended enforcement outcome
statistics:
Thursday 8 March 2018
Murray-Darling Basin: water mismanagement just keeps rolling on
Image sourced from Twitter
Having miserably failed to enforce even the most basic of safeguards against widespread water theft in the Murray Darling Basin - such as not allowing unmetered water extraction - the Murray Darling Basin Authority and then water resources minister and now humble Nationals backbencher Barnaby Joyce have left us having to rely on leaks to the media to find out the true state of play in the national water wars.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
4 March 2018:
The ailing state of the
Darling River has been traced to man-made water extraction, according to a
leaked report by the agency charged with overseeing its health.
The "hydrologic
investigation", dated last November and obtained by Fairfax Media,
analysed more than 2000 low-flow events from 1990-2017 on the
Barwon-Darling River between Mungindi near the NSW-Queensland border down to
Wilcannia in far-western NSW .
The draft report – a
version of which is understood to have been sent to the Turnbull government for
comment – comes days after WaterNSW issued a
red alert for blue-green algae on the Lower Darling River at Pooncarie
and Burtundy.
Bourke
is among towns also on stage-two water restrictions as the Darling
dries up in places
The paper by
Murray-Darling Basin Authority's (MDBA) own scientists found flow behaviour had
changed since 2000, particularly in mid-sections of the river such as between
the towns of Walgett and Brewarrina.
On that section, low or
no-flow periods were "difficult to reconcile with impacts purely caused by
climate", the scientists said.
Indeed, dry periods on
the river downstream from Bourke were "significantly longer than
pre-2000", with the dry spells during the millennium drought continuing
afterwards.
Water resource
development – also described as "anthropogenic impact" – must also
play "a critical role" in the low flows between Walgett and
Brewarrina, the report said.
The revelations
come after
the Senate last month voted to disallow changes to the $13 billion
Murray-Darling Basin Plan that would have cut annual environmental water savings
by 70 billion litres…..
A spokeswoman for the
authority said the report was "undergoing quality assurance processes
prior to publication", with a formal release on its website likely in
coming days.
The MDBA commissioned
the internal team to "address some of the specific concerns raised"
by its own compliance reviews and those of the Berejiklian government, she
said.
Terry Korn, president
of the Australian Floodplain Association, said the report confirmed
what his group's members had known since the O'Farrell government changed the
river's water-sharing plan in 2012 to allow irrigators to pump even during
low-flow periods.
Poor policy had been
compounded by "totally inadequate monitoring and compliance systems",
Mr Korn said.
"Some irrigators
have capitalised on this poor management by the NSW government to such an
extent that their removal of critical low flows has denied downstream
landholders and communities their basic riparian rights to fresh clean
water," he said. "This is totally unacceptable."….
Fairfax Media also
sought comment from federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud.
Once publicly outed for sitting on the review report the Murray Darling Basin Authority finally decided to publish it this week.
https://www.scribd.com/document/372999806/Murray-Darling-Basn-Compliance-Review-Final-Report-November-2017Once publicly outed for sitting on the review report the Murray Darling Basin Authority finally decided to publish it this week.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
20 February 2018:
The NSW government
intervened to urge the purchase of water rights from a large irrigator on the
Darling River that delivered a one-off $37 million profit to its owner while
leaving downstream users struggling with stagnant flows.
Gavin Hanlon, the senior
NSW water official who
resigned last September amid multiple inquiries into allegations of
water theft and poor compliance by some large irrigators, wrote to his federal
counterparts in the Agriculture and Water Resources Department, then
headed by Barnaby Joyce, in late December 2016 urging the buyback of water from
Tandou property to proceed.
The Tandou water
purchase proposal "should be progressed...given the high cost of the
alternative water supply solution" for the property south-east of Broken
Hill, Mr Hanlon wrote, according to a document sent on December 23, 2016 and
obtained by Fairfax Media.
Early in 2017, the
Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences estimated
the property's annual water entitlements of 21.9 billion litres to be
$24,786,750 "based on recent trade values", according to another
document listed as "Commercial in Confidence".
Despite this valuation,
the federal government by 16 March, 2017 would pay Tandou's owner Webster Ltd
more than $78 million. At its announcement on 21 June last year, Webster said
in a statement it "expects to record a net profit on disposal in the order
of $36-37 million".
The transfer of the
water rights are apparently the subject of inquiries by the NSW Independent
Commission Against Corruption, with several people saying they have discussed
their knowledge of the deal with the agency. An ICAC spokeswoman declined to
comment.
Webster Ltd
styles itself as a leading
Australian agribusiness company with a rich, diverse history spanning over 180
years.
Liberal Party donor Christopher
Darcy “Chris” Corrigan is Executive Chairman and a significant shareholder in this company
Tuesday 27 February 2018
The mess that Barnaby left
Environmental Defender’s Office NSW, undated 2017:
EDO NSW, on behalf of
its client the Inland Rivers Network, has commenced civil enforcement
proceedings in the NSW Land and Environment Court in relation to allegations of
unlawful water pumping by a large-scale irrigator on the Barwon-Darling River.
The two water access
licences at the centre of these allegations allow the licence holder to pump
water from the Barwon-Darling River in accordance with specified licence
conditions, as well as rules set out in the relevant ‘water sharing plan’. The
conditions and rules specify – amongst other things – how much water can be
legally pumped in a water accounting year (which is the same as the financial
year) and at what times pumping is permissible (which depends on the volume of
water flowing in the river at any given time).
Our client alleges that
the holder of these licences pumped water in contravention of some of these
conditions and rules, thereby breaching relevant provisions of the Water
Management Act 2000 (NSW) (WM Act). The allegations are based on licence
data obtained by EDO NSW earlier in 2017 from Water NSW, a state-owned
corporation charged with the responsibility of regulating compliance with the
WM Act.
Analysis of this data,
along with the relevant rules and publicly available information on river
heights, indicates that the licence holder may have pumped significantly more
water than was permissible on one licence during the 2014-15 water year, and
taken a significant amount of water under another licence during a period of
low flow when pumping was not permitted in the 2015-16 water year. Despite
being made aware of these allegations by EDO NSW on two occasions, in April and
August 2017, and having had access to the data since at least July 2016, Water
NSW has not provided any indication that it intends to take compliance action
against the licence holder.
Both allegations concern
the potentially unlawful pumping of significant volumes of water, which may
have had serious impacts on environmental flows in the river and downstream
water users. However, our client is particularly concerned by the alleged
over-extraction in the 2014/15 water year, as this period was so dry that the
Menindee Lakes – which are filled by flows from the Barwon-Darling River – fell
to 4 percent of their total storage capacity. This in turn threatened Broken
Hill’s water security and led the NSW Government to impose an embargo on water
extractions during part of that year in order to improve flows down the
Barwon-Darling into the Lakes and Lower Darling River.
In these proceedings,
the Inland Rivers Network is seeking, amongst other things, an injunction
preventing the licence holder from continuing to breach the relevant licence
conditions. In addition, and in order to make good any depletion of
environmental flows caused by the alleged unlawful pumping, our client is also
asking the Court to require the licence holder to return to the river system an
equivalent volume of water to that alleged to have been unlawfully taken, or to
restrain the licence holder from pumping such a volume from the river system,
during the next period of low flows in the river system. Failure to comply with
a court order constitutes contempt of court, which is a criminal offence.
EDO NSW is grateful to
barristers Tom Howard SC and Natasha Hammond for their assistance in this
matter.
Brendan Dobbie, Senior
Solicitor at EDO NSW, has carriage of this matter for IRN.
The Australia Institute, Moving
targets: Barnaby Joyce, Warrego valley buybacks and amendments to the Murray
Darling Basin Plan, February 2018:
In 2008, then Senator
Joyce criticised the Labor government’s purchase of water in the Warrego
valley: that is going to have no effect whatsoever in solving the problems of
the lower Murray-Darling, and especially the southern states.
Despite the now Deputy
Prime Minister and Water Minister’s own fierce criticism of that purchase, he
approved the $16,977,600 purchase of another 10.611 gigalitres of water in the
Warrego valley in March 2017 at more than twice the price paid by the Labor
government. Questions should be raised about what changed the Deputy Prime
Minister’s mind and whether that purchase was value for money.
This purchase also has
serious implications for the recent amendments to the Basin Plan that was
disallowed by the Senate on 14 February 2018.
This purchase was not
required to meet the water recovery target in the Warrego under the
Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Instead, it was intended to count towards the water
recovery target in the Border Rivers. This swap required an amendment to s6.05
of the Basin Plan, which was tabled in parliament and disallowed by the Senate.
Yet, the Warrego purchase was not reflected in the Sustainable Diversion Limits
(SDLs) put to Parliament as part of the amendments.
Murray-Darling Basin
Authority (MDBA) is required to base its recommendations to change SDLs based
on best available science, but the proposed amendments allowed MDBA and States
to subsequently change the SDLs in a valley without any consideration of the
science.
While MDBA was seeking
public submissions on changes to valley SDLs, based on science; the Department
of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) was in negotiations to change those
valley targets, not based on science.
Parliament was asked to
pass an amendment to the Basin Plan with SDLs that would have been changed
based on a deal agreed over a year earlier, if the amendment had passed.
Given that the new SDLs
were known and agreed by governments, it is not apparent why the MDBA did not
include the new SDLs in the amendment put to parliament.
Monday 15 January 2018
Remember the man who spent millions unsuccessfully seeding clouds and more money chasing the myth that NSW coastal rivers could be turned inland?
In 2007 Malcolm Bligh Turnbull as federal water minister squandered $10 million on an aerial rain dance and also spent money on an ill-fated, flawed desktop study for the damming and diversion of at least one NSW Coastal river.
Well, Mr. Turnbull as Australian Prime Minister returned to his favourite pastime last year - spending other people’s money on dubious water projects - and is holding fast to yet another hare-brained proposal, Snowy 2.0.
Financial Review, 4 January 2018:
Nine months ago Snowy Hydro, the electricity generator and retailer owned by the Commonwealth, Victoria and NSW governments, announced that it would be carrying out a feasibility study into a massive expansion of the Snowy hydro generation system to add 2000 megawatts of pumped hydro generation capacity. Snowy Hydro's announcement of the feasibility study followed an earlier announcement from the Prime Minister that Snowy 2.0 was expected to cost $2 billion.
The feasibility study was published shortly before Christmas and the final investment decision is expected by the end of 2018. All economic analysis has been excluded from the public version of the feasibility study. But the publicly available version does report the "base cost" of Snowy 2.0 (to Snowy Hydro) is likely to be in the range from $3.8 billion to $4.5 billion. This "base cost" excludes land and developments costs, funding and financing costs, GST, project management or hedging costs. And the feasibility study warns that there are risks, opportunities and contingency amounts that significantly affect this range.
In addition to the costs that Snowy Hydro incurs, Snowy 2.0 will be the largest point connection in the National Electricity Market's history and will require massive transmission expansion along the Great Dividing Range. TransGrid in NSW provided early estimates of transmission costs in NSW related to Snowy 2.0 of $0.6 billion to $1.4 billion. Estimates of the requirement in Victoria are not yet known but are likely to be even higher because the necessary upgrade to Victoria will be even larger.
So, in round numbers, a conservative estimate of the total capital outlay attributable to Snowy Hydro 2.0 will be at least $8 billion, four times more than the prime minister suggested when announcing this project. It would be surprising if the estimate at the time of the final investment decision is any lower than this, and the actual build cost will surely be yet higher, quite possibly significantly so.
Will it nonetheless be money well spent? This is very unlikely. Pumped hydro is an inefficient storage technology. Australia already has significant pumped hydro capacity – 900 megawatts (MW) at Tumut 3 in Snowy and 500 MW at Wivenhoe in Queensland. Both are rarely used because they are inefficient.
The feasibility study says that at capacity, Snowy 2.0 will only produce about 1 kilowatt hour for each 1.5 kilowatt hours needed to pump water to the top reservoir. Add to that 10 per cent for losses in transmitting electricity from generators in the Hunter and Latrobe valleys to pump the water uphill. And then add another 10 per cent for losses in transmitting the stored electricity back to the main load centres in Sydney and Melbourne where most of it will be consumed. In other words, Snowy 2.0 will use about 1.8 kilowatt hours for each kilowatt hour that it actually delivers to consumers. By comparison, a battery installed on a customer's premises or on the local grid can be expected to use about 1.1 kilowatt hour for each kilowatt hour delivered.
It is inconceivable that Snowy 2.0 will produce revenues that are vaguely close to that needed to compensate its capital outlays. This is because the volume of electricity it can produce, valued at the difference between the price paid to pump water uphill and the price received when running the water back down the hill again, will be much too small.
Experience in other countries is also instructive. The feasibility study likens Snowy 2.0 to the Dinorwig pumped hydro plant in Wales. Dinorwig, along with the smaller Ffestiniog, has comparable capacity to Snowy 2.0. In its most recent market transaction six months ago, the market value of Dinorwig and Ffestiniog was established at $236 million, a small fraction of its initial build and subsequent refurbishment costs.
It is almost certainly the case in Australia that the market value of Snowy 2.0 will be a small fraction of its likely construction cost. If they decide to proceed with Snowy 2.0, the Commonwealth, NSW and Victorian governments will be forced to substantially write down their investment, at tax payers' expense. Or, if they can not stomach that, electricity consumers will be forced to fund the deadweight.
There is time to dodge this bullet. At the very least, independent investment advisors should now be asked to opine, in publicly available reports, on likely market valuations of Snowy 2.0, before any further contemplation of this project.
The Snowy 2.0 feasibility study can be found here.
A word of warning to readers. SMEC (formerly the Snowy Mountains Engineering Company and now a member of the Subarna Jurong Group) has been involved in the Snowy 2.0 feasibility study since May 2017.
In October 2017 mainstream media reported that SMEC had five of its subsidiaries banned by the World Bank after a corruption investigation
Sunday 3 December 2017
SA Royal Commission into Murray-Darling Basin management and alleged water theft
The NSW Berejiklian Government will not be happy with this………
ABC News, 30 November 2017:
Allegations of water theft upstream in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) have prompted South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill to launch a state royal commission to identify any perpetrators.
New South Wales and Queensland were slapped with a scathing assessment of compliance with the MDB Plan on Saturday, after a review found poor levels of enforcement.
The review also found a lack of transparency surrounding the states' water management, along with Victoria's.
Mr Weatherill said the report did not go far enough and announced a royal commission.
"The review that was handed down did not go into detailed findings of who committed water theft and who behaved inappropriately in relation to the river," he said.
"There have been no specific findings in relation to individuals or groups of individuals."
When asked whether a state royal commission could force bureaucrats from interstate to give evidence, Mr Weatherill said the royal commissioner would be given the powers of compulsion.
"And they will have no choice but to come forward," he said.
"A state-based royal commission does have the capacity to analyse things that touch on other states, provided there is a connection to South Australia.”
"That's our very clear legal advice and it's our intention to pursue this royal commission's power to their fullest extent, so we can get to the bottom of this water theft."…..
Despite labelling it "just another stunt", the Federal Government said it would cooperate with SA's royal commission.
Assistant water resources minister Anne Ruston said the issues in the basin were being addressed but the Commonwealth would not stand in the way of the commission, and neither should NSW or Victoria.
"I'd like to think they'd cooperate, certainly the Commonwealth will cooperate, we haven't got anything to hide," she said.
The Australian Government’s 25 November 2017 The Murray–Darling Basin Water Compliance Review can be read here.
Friday 11 August 2017
Water rorting continues in the Murray-Darling Basin aided and abetted by the NSW Nationals
And local government and commercial interests in the Murray-Darling Basin have the hide to cry that they are water deprived and should be allowed to dam and divert water from the Clarence River catchment until that coastal system is a pale shadow of its vibrant self.
The Guardian, 4 August 2017:
The New South Wales regional water minister, Niall Blair, has quietly granted himself the power to approve illegal floodplain works retrospectively.
A Wentworth Group scientist, Jamie Pittock, has accused the NSW government of actively undermining the Murray-Darling basin plan as revelations have continued about the state government’s management of the river system.
Since Four Corners report raised allegations of water theft and secret meetings between a senior NSW water bureaucrat and a small number of irrigators,Blair is under increasing pressure over his water responsibilities.
This followed Daily Telegraph reports that the Nationals MP had been urging his Liberal colleague, the environment minister, Gabrielle Upton, to change the Barwon-Darling water-sharing plan retrospectively to favour large irrigators. He said the change was needed because of an error in the rules.
It has now come to light that Blair gazetted a Barwon-Darling valley floodplain management plan which gives him power to approve flood works built illegally even if they do not comply with requirements prior to the plan.
Under clause 39 of the new Barwon-Darling valley plan, a flood work that does not comply can be approved if “in the minister’s opinion” it is for an access road, a supply channel, a stock refuge or an infrastructure protection work
.
A spokesman for WaterNSW said three relevant applications from the Barwon-Darling region had been received since the change but none had yet been approved.
The NSW Greens MLC Jeremy Buckingham called on the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, to remove the water portfolio from the National party after the regulation changes came to light.
“This is disgraceful example of the National party giving away free water to their big irrigator mates,” Buckingham said. “Many of these areas are so flat that even a 10 to 20cm bank can divert a huge amount of water into an irrigation dam and away from natural waterways.
“It’s a massive gift of water to the big irrigators. If we want to recover the water in the future then taxpayer will have to hand over huge amounts of compensation for what were illegal constructions.”
A spokeswoman for Blair said the gazettal was a “significant legacy issue” required to create a process where unapproved works could be properly and transparently assessed. She said to be considered, works must not have been previously refused and would still need to be assessed under certain criteria.
“Supply channels are one of the types of existing works that clause 39 indicates that we will accept application for,” the spokeswoman said. “Just because they are existing, doesn’t mean that they will be approved, just that they can apply. This approach is being rolled out through all floodplain management plans.”
Pittock, an associate professor in the Fenner school of environment and society at the Australian National University, said the revelations showed NSW was systematically white-anting the Murray Darling plan.
“The ‘rule error’ and other questionable dealings between wealthy irrigators, government officials and politicians in NSW highlight how the intent of the basin plan can be frustrated by those hostile to its implementation at the state level,” he told Guardian Australia.
“Changes of regulations in NSW have allowed irrigators to take erstwhile environmental flows by allowing greater pump capacity and earlier extraction based on river heights such that commonwealth-purchased environmental water in Queensland in not ‘shepherded’ through New South Wales to the lower Murray.
“Consequently towns like Broken Hill, pastoralists and Aboriginal communities, as well as the environment, have been starved of water.
Wednesday 9 August 2017
Still feel unhappy with the Turnbull Government's policies on underground, land surface and marine waters? So you should
“Dead zones are hypoxic (low-oxygen) areas in the world's oceans and large lakes, caused by "excessive nutrient pollution from human activities coupled with other factors that deplete the oxygen required to support most marine life in bottom and near-bottom water.” [US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration]
Every Northern Hemisphere Spring this dead zone occurs in the Gulf of Mexico and increases in size over time.
It occurs because every year the Mississippi River collects roughly ten thousand pounds of fertilizer and raw sewage pollution from 31 states and some of Canada. When spring and summer rains come down, they wash the excessive nutrients in fertilizers and sewage downstream and out into the Gulf.
It is only one of more than 400 hypoxic areas world-wide which were mapped in 2008.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), Andrew H. Altieri et al, 2017, Tropical dead zones and mass mortalities on coral reefs:
Oxygen-starved coastal waters are rapidly increasing in prevalence worldwide. However, little is known about the impacts of these “dead zones” in tropical ecosystems or their potential threat to coral reefs. We document the deleterious effects of such an anoxic event on coral habitat and biodiversity, and show that the risk of dead-zone events to reefs worldwide likely has been seriously underestimated. Awareness of, and research on, reef hypoxia is needed to address the threat posed by dead zones to coral reefs.
Degradation of coastal water quality in the form of low dissolved oxygen levels (hypoxia) can harm biodiversity, ecosystem function, and human wellbeing. Extreme hypoxic conditions along the coast, leading to what are often referred to as “dead zones,” are known primarily from temperate regions. However, little is known about the potential threat of hypoxia in the tropics, even though the known risk factors, including eutrophication and elevated temperatures, are common. Here we document an unprecedented hypoxic event on the Caribbean coast of Panama and assess the risk of dead zones to coral reefs worldwide. The event caused coral bleaching and massive mortality of corals and other reef-associated organisms, but observed shifts in community structure combined with laboratory experiments revealed that not all coral species are equally sensitive to hypoxia. Analyses of global databases showed that coral reefs are associated with more than half of the known tropical dead zones worldwide, with >10% of all coral reefs at elevated risk for hypoxia based on local and global risk factors. Hypoxic events in the tropics and associated mortality events have likely been underreported, perhaps by an order of magnitude, because of the lack of local scientific capacity for their detection. Monitoring and management plans for coral reef resilience should incorporate the growing threat of coastal hypoxia and include support for increased detection and research capacity.
Anyone still in favour of allowing an expansion of coal mining in the Galilee Basin, Queensland?
Anyone still comfortable with the amount of agricultural/industrial run-off into the Great Barrier Reef, marine protected areas and Australian coastal waters, which is allowed under state and federal policies?
It’s not just our rivers and aquifers which are suffering from political inaction and vested interest greed.
BACKGROUND
The Australian Government’s OzCoasts website states:
A reduction in dissolved oxygen concentrations is amongst the most important effects of eutrophication on aquatic organisms [4]. Hypoxia can cause direct mortality, reduced growth rates and altered behaviour and distributions of fish [4] and other organisms. In addition, bottom-water hypoxia can interact with elevated water temperatures at the surface to produce a "temperature-oxygen squeeze" effect, which can greatly reduce the amount of summer habitat available for some species [12]. Eggs and larvae of fish (and crustaceans) may be particularly susceptible to this effect because these life history stages are less able to avoid unfavourable conditions, and because they live in near shore areas, such as estuaries, where too-high water temperatures and too-low oxygen conditions often occur [5]. Changes in fish assemblages and crustaceans in response to hypoxia and & anoxia can render these organisms more susceptible to fishing pressure, and can increase the abundance of non-targeted species in by-catch [4].
Dissolved oxygen status also influences the uptake or release of nutrients from sediment. When oxygen is depleted, the nitrification pathway is blocked, and efficiencies may be lowered. As a consequence, more nutrients (e.g. nitrogen and phosphorous) are released from the sediment in bio-available forms [7]. These nutrients help to sustain algal blooms, and therefore continue the supply organic matter to the sediments [7]. With organic matter (energy) diverted from invertebrate consumption to microbial decomposition, the natural pattern of energy flow is altered, and pelagic and opportunistic species are favoured [8]. Indeed, an increased ratio of planktivore:demersal fish biomass is an important effect of eutrophication [11]. Low bottom water oxygen concentrations are also conducive to the build-up of toxic compounds such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia gas, which can also be harmful to benthic organisms and fish. Even short-lived anoxic events can cause the mass mortality of fish and benthic organisms [10].
Overall, anoxic and hypoxic events can cause large reductions in the abundance, diversity and harvest of fish in affected waters [4], and can contribute to an overall loss of bio-diversity[9]. However, the extent to which bottom water anoxia causes declines in overall fish production depends on a balanced between the negative and positive and effects of eutrophication in the full spectrum of habitats within the system [4]……
Major research institutions, universities and government (local and State) agencies gather oxygen data for specific research studies. Some information on anoxic and hypoxic events in Australian coastal waterways was compiled during the National Land & Water Resources Audit. In most cases, no data was available. However, localised or short-lived periods of hypoxia were reported in the Derwent and Huon estuaries (TAS) and in the Tuggerah Lakes (NSW). Prolonged and extensive anoxia is experienced in the Gippsland Lakes.
Note:
Anoxia is an extreme form of hypoxia.
Labels:
environment,
sustainability,
water,
water policy politics
Monday 7 August 2017
Politicians and Water: The Murray Darling Basin Scandal Fallout
The
ABC Four Corners program “Pumped” which was screened on 24th July
has illustrated how important scrutiny of the establishment is to the rule of
law in our democracy. It also illustrates why the ABC is under threat from many
politicians and other powerful players who see any effective scrutiny of their
operations as an intolerable threat to their way of doing business, a way that
is against both the general community interest as well as the national
interest.
The
outrage from the revelations of water theft and other illegality by big
irrigators in the northern NSW area of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) has
increased over the days since the program was screened. Politicians have
been left scrambling and forced to change tack following the strength of the
reaction and the condemnation of the inadequacy of their initial responses.
In
NSW the Nationals Minister for Primary Industry, Niall Blair, was forced to
change from an internal inquiry conducted by his department to an independent
inquiry. Blair was excessively optimistic in thinking that such an
internal inquiry would be acceptable given that Four Corners had revealed a
questionable relationship between Gavin Hanlon[1],
his department’s Deputy Director General (Water), and big irrigators in the upper
MDB. In addition there was the important question of why the department
had failed to act on departmental compliance officers’ reports of licence
breaches and meter tampering. And there were questions about the role of the
former water minister Kevin Humphries in dealing with the large irrigators.
The
NSW Opposition has also taken action referring both the former Nationals water
minister Kevin Humphries (Member for Barwon) and a senior bureaucrat
(presumably Gavin Hanlon) to ICAC.
The
Federal Government reaction was initially almost dismissive. The Minister
for Water Resources, Nationals Leader Barnaby Joyce[2],
as well as attempting to downplay the water theft by comparing it to cattle
rustling, claimed that it was a matter for NSW and that there was no need for
Federal Government involvement. Billions of dollars of taxpayer funds have been
used to buy back water for environmental flows and instead of being used for
this purpose this water has gone to the big irrigators in the upper
Barwon-Darling. Presumably the taxpayer funds had come from the Federal
Government. This would surely make it a matter of very great interest to this
government which, seeing it is so concerned about budget repair, would surely
be appalled at the waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.
Joyce’s
totally inadequate initial response was compounded shortly afterwards with what
he said in a speech to irrigators in a hotel at Shepparton, a speech which was
recorded by one of those attending.
Joyce said,
"We have taken water, put it back into agriculture, so we could look after
you and make sure we don't have the greenies running the show basically sending
you out the back door, and that was a hard ask.”
"A
couple of nights ago on Four Corners, you know what that's all about? It's about
them trying to take more water off you, trying to create a calamity. A calamity
for which the solution is to take more water off you, shut more of your towns
down."
Even
a dinosaur like Barnaby Joyce should have been aware that anyone carrying a
smartphone has the capacity to secretly record what others are saying. In
the political sphere we have seen how damaging this can be in the cases of
Christopher Pyne and One Nation’s James Ashby. The Shepparton recording has
certainly damaged Joyce and has added volume to the calls for him to be sacked
from the Water portfolio. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen as
the Prime Minister has enough problems in his own party without alienating
Joyce and the Nationals.
By
Sunday 30th the scandal became a matter that the Federal Government
had to act upon despite Joyce’s earlier labelling it a state matter. The
Federal solution was for the Murray Darling Basin Authority to carry out an
independent basin-wide review into compliance with state-based regulations governing
water use. The Authority is to report by 15th December 2017.
The Government saw this review as complementing the other investigations of the
Four Corners allegations.
However,
this is a case of far too little too late. The MDB Authority is scarcely
a body able to conduct an independent review of what has obviously been
happening under its watch. Furthermore a cynic would see the reporting
date of 15th December, just before the Christmas holiday season, as
a typical government move to ensure that the review report would receive
minimal attention and be forgotten about over the holiday break.
The
Federal Opposition, like its NSW state counterpart, has also taken action on
the scandal. It requested that the Auditor-General expand his current
audit of the Federal Department of Agriculture and Water Resources. The
Auditor-General will now include how the federal department is monitoring the
performance of NSW under the National Partnership Agreement on Implementing
Water Reform in the MDB relevant to the protection and use of environmental
water.
Unsurprisingly,
the South Australian Government, which has long been concerned about the lack
of water reaching the end of the Murray-Darling system, was outraged by the
allegations. It is calling for a judicial inquiry, a much stronger
investigation than those arranged by NSW and the Federal Government. SA
senators from Labor, the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Party and the Conservatives
have joined their state government in calling for a judicial inquiry.
This
scandal has a long way to run yet. There are major questions to be
answered about the National Party – both state and federally - and its
relationship with the big irrigators and its apparent indifference to the needs
of other irrigators further down the system. There is also the question
of its influence on the workings of the NSW Department of
Agriculture. And just what role has it had in limiting the
effectiveness of – perhaps even of sabotaging - the Murray Darling Basin Plan?
For
both Federal and NSW state Liberal leaders there is the question about the
advisability of having resource management portfolios in the hands of Nationals
and of putting both Agriculture and Water in the same portfolio. Each of
these governments has a very poor environmental record. What has been
happening on the Barwon-Darling reinforces the view that keeping “in good” with
the Nationals is far more important for the Liberals than ensuring that
environmental policies are in the best long-term interests of the state and nation.
[1] Gavin Hanlon joined
the NSW Department of Primary Industries in December 2014. Prior to this
he had been Managing Director of Goulburn Murray Water since 2011.
[2] The water portfolio
was removed from the Environment Department and allocated to Joyce as a result
of the agreement with the Liberals in 2015 following Malcolm
Turnbull becoming Prime Minister.
Hildegard
Northern
Rivers
2nd
August 2017
Guest Speak is a North
Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment
from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email northcoastvoices at gmail dot com dot
au to submit comment for consideration.
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