Time lapse images of part of the Lake Menindee system in the Murray Darling Basin drying up through mismanagement, 2016 to 2018.Lake Menindee in 43 images pic.twitter.com/bHCn06EXfN— Chris Rawlins 🚙 (@ChrisBH011) January 16, 2019
It won't be long before multiple talking heads from the Liberal and National parties will be penning opinion pieces in national newspapers and popping up as guests on radio or television accusing those who are acutely concerned, about water sustainability and the plight of the Murray-Darling Basin, of bashing the poor hardworking farmer and telling us that all irrigators are ethical individuals who are only trying to feed the nation.
Now that may be true of some, it probably isn't true of many and it is definitely not true of all irrigators.
The amount of water being taken from Murray-Darling Basin rivers is eye watering.
According to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA); Irrigated agriculture in the Basin consumes about 60% of Australia’s available water.1
In 2017 the National Water Account stated that total surface water and groundwater entitlements in the Basin equalled 19,374 gigalitres.
Professor Sheldon of the Australian Rivers Institute at Griffith University states that more than 50% of average water inflows into the Murray and Darling rivers are extracted for irrigation.
Overall, the Murray-Darling Basin contains 77,000 km of rivers, with flows said to total some 35,000 gigalitres on average.2 A figure which now appears unreliable.
At the beginning of the 2017–18 water year, the total volume of held water for the environment was nominally about 2,871 gigalitres (in long-term available water terms).3
Science has been telling the Federal Government and the governments of Qld, NSW, Vic and SA that Murray-Darling Basin rivers cannot sustain the rates of water extraction they have been experiencing since the second half of last century and more water needs to be returned to the rivers as environmental flows.4
Government does not appear to be listening. Probably because implementing an effective response to years of mismanagement of Basin water resources would mean reducing the over allocation of water rights by commencing a policy of permanently buying back at least 7,000 gigalitres of water entitlements from irrigators and reducing the annual amount of water their remaining water entitlements represent.
Here are just three examples of excessive water consumption in the face of declining national water security.
Webster Ltd landholdings include 40,000 irrigable hectares as well as extensive grazing farmland.
Cubbie has annual water entitlements of 460,000 megalitres. In addition it holds back in off-river storage up to 45,000 megalitres of surface water from the flood plain.
Its water storage area covers 12,000ha configured in a cell arrangements with an estimated capacity of 540,000 megalitres. It is reportedly the largest irrigation property in the Southern Hemisphere.
Cubbie's principal crop appears to be cotton.6
Norman Farming's principal crop is cotton.
Webster, Cubbie and Norman Farming between them have annual water entitlements which exceed the volume of water in Sydney Harbour.
2. For comparison Sydney Harbour is estimated to hold 500 gigalitres.1 giglitre of water equals 1,000 megalitre.
3. Water theft appears to be an ongoing issue. In 2018 one NSW irrigator pleading guilty to the theft potentially involving billions of litres at a Mungindi property near the NSW-Queensland border, while another at Brewarrina has been charged with taking water when the flow conditions did not permit it, and breaching licence and approval conditions.
4. Initially a scientific assessment by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority identified that 6,000-7,000 GL per year would be required to return the environmental assets of the Murray-Darling Basin to sustainable ecological health. This was reduced by almost half to 3,000-4,000 GL per year in the Basin Guide. Eventually, the Australian Government considered 2,800 GL, even lower than the minimum proposed, was a reasonable target. This was further reduced to 2,750 GL before the Queensland Government agreed to sign up to the Basin Plan, a reduction from the Northern Basin. Reduction of the target by another 70 GL represents a further significant reduction in environmental flows which will exacerbate environmental decline. [Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW, submission]
5. The volume of water entitlements owned by businesses with some level of foreign ownership was 1.9 million megalitres at 30 June 2016 or 12.5% of the total volume of water entitlements for agricultural purposes in Australia. Of the water entitlements with some level of foreign ownership, the majority (1.6 million megalitres or 83%) was held by businesses that were more than 50% foreign owned. [Australian Bureau of Statistics, 7127.0 - Agricultural Land and Water Ownership, 2015-16]
6. According to the Dept of Agriculture and Water Resources ABARES, the Murray–Darling Basin accounts for around 91 per cent of Australia’s total cotton farms and cotton area. It is estimated that the total area in the Basin under cotton production is 490,000 hectares.If all of this land was planted for cotton in a given year then it is likely that the crops would require somewhere between 2.19 million to 3.82 million megalitres of water.
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