The
Guardian, 13
February 2019:
Water flows at key
environmental sites in the Murray-Darling
Basin are unimproved or worse than before the basin plan was
implemented, a scientific report has found, raising serious questions about
where the $8.5bn of environmental water purchased by taxpayers is going.
The Wentworth Group of
Concerned Scientists, a group of eminent environmental scientists formed a
decade ago to advocate for the river system, have looked at two key sites which
they identified when the plan was put in place in 2010.
They have found that environmental
flows are not meeting the government’s own objectives for improving the health
of the river at these sites.
At one site flows have
actually declined, compared to pre-plan days.
The work, the first time
anyone – including the Murray-Darling Basin Authority – has tried to look in
detail at progress against the plan’s own environmental objectives, paints a
worrying picture of whether the plan is working.
In coming up with the
environmental water recovery targets in the plan, the federal government
identified 122 indicator sites – sites that needed more flows to ensure
biodiversity was preserved or restored.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
16 February 2019:
An
unsolicited modification of licences for irrigators on the Macquarie River
has allowed water earmarked for protecting one of the most important wetlands
in the Murray-Darling Basin to be diverted for a cotton crop.
Documents obtained by
the Herald show farmers were alerted a year ago by the NSW
Department of Industry's water division to changes of the conditions on their
unregulated water licences. That prompted the Office of Environment and
Heritage to seek to nullify the changes' impact.
One stakeholder, who
declined to be named, said he "sat here in shock" when the letter
from the water department arrived. "It was like a gift from heaven."
The change effectively
gave permission for the licence holders to extract environmental water flows
even though they had been paid for by taxpayers in both NSW and the
Commonwealth.
Enabled by the new
rules, Michael Egan, owner of the Kiameron farm near the eastern side of the
marches, alerted agencies of his plans to pump environmental flows even as the
drought across the region intensified.
Between September 9 and
October 5 last year, the farm extracted about 600 million litres of a 10
billion-litre flow headed for the marshes, assisting the irrigation of his
cotton crop.
"When it's in an
unregulated part of the system, [the agencies] lose control of the water,"
Mr Egan told the Herald. "I'm just running with the rules."
The Commonwealth
Environmental Water Office said "most of the flow was protected from
pumping by licence conditions". Still, the agency was continuing to work
with NSW agencies "to address anomalies in the licencing framework and
improve the protection of environmental flows".
The Murray-Darling Basin
Authority said it had alerted the NSW Natural Resources Access Regulator
(NRAR) to investigate the matter after "satellite monitoring of
environmental water picked up images of water being diverted".
It said amendments to
NSW's Water Management Act would "allow environmental water to be
left in stream for environmental purposes".
A former water compliance
officer said, "That's not an anomaly; that's maladministration. How do you
get environmental water to grow a cotton crop?"
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