World-first Australian Federal Court case over Santos’ ‘clean energy’ & net zero claims

On the same day that a judgement was handed down in Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action Incorporated v Environment Protection Authority [2021] NSWLEC 92 (26 August 2021) ordering The Environment Protection Authority, in accordance with s 9(1)(a) of the Protection of the Environment Administration Act 1991 (NSW), is to develop environmental quality objectives, guidelines and policies to ensure environment protection from climate change, news came of another legal challenge in which the Environmental Defenders Office is the the legal representative of the applicant.

Santos Ltd Cooper Basin facility
IMAGE: Environmental Defenders Office

Environmental Defenders Office, 26 August 2021:

The Environmental Defenders Office, acting on behalf of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), has filed a Federal Court case against gas giant Santos over its claims natural gas is “clean fuel” and that it has a credible pathway to net zero emissions by 2040.

ACCR will argue the claims – contained in the company’s 2020 Annual Report – constitute misleading or deceptive conduct under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and the Australian Consumer Law.

This is the first court case in the world to challenge the veracity of a company’s net zero emissions target, as well as the first in Australia raising the issue of climate greenwashing against the oil and gas industry.

It is also a landmark, world-first test case in relation to the viability of carbon capture and storage, and the environmental impacts of blue hydrogen, increasingly touted as a key element in gas companies’ pathways toward net zero emissions.

Santos’ claims – “Clean” gas & a “credible” net zero pathway

Santos Ltd is one of Australia’s largest gas companies, and the biggest domestic gas supplier in the country.

In Australia its major projects include oil and gas extraction off the coast of Western Australia, as well as in the vast Cooper and Eromanga Basins that span South Australia and Queensland.

Santos is also a major player in coal seam gas, developing vast areas of the Surat and Bowen Basins in Queensland and planning a major new CSG project around the northern NSW agricultural hub of Narrabri.

In 2019-20, Santos was responsible for approximately 7.74 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions from its direct operations, with the end-use of the natural gas it supplied emitting an additional 28.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

Despite this, Santos describes itself as a “clean energy” provider in its 2020 Annual Report, stating that natural gas is a “clean fuel”.

It has also sought to assure investors and the public that it has a clear and credible pathway to achieve net zero emissions by 2040.

This pathway is heavily reliant on both carbon capture and storage (CCS)processes and the production of “blue hydrogen”.

However, ACCR alleges that Santos failed to disclose that it has firm plans to increase its greenhouse gas emissions by developing new or existing oil and gas project including the Barossa, Dorado and Narrabri LNG projects. ACCR also alleges that Santos failed to disclose that its net zero plans depend upon a range of undisclosed qualifications and assumptions about CCS.

In addition, although blue hydrogen is increasingly touted as a key element in gas companies’ pathways toward net zero emissions, scientists and even key gas industry figures have raised questions over its environmental impacts in comparison to other energy sources.

ACCR says that these issues call into question whether Santos had reasonable grounds to assert it has a “clear and credible” plan to reach net zero emissions by 2040.

On behalf of ACCR, we will argue that in making the above claims Santos potentially engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct under both the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and the Australian Consumer Law.

We are asking the court to grant an injunction requiring Santos to correct the record publicly on these statements, and prohibit Santos from engaging in similar misleading or deceptive conduct in the future.

The Impact of Greenwashing – Investors & Environment

This case is about holding gas companies like Santos to account for the claims they make about their product and future in a low-carbon world.

Our client, ACCR, is a shareholder advocacy organisation focused on how listed companies, industry associations, and investors are managing climate, labour, human rights and governance issues.

They are also investors in Santos, taking this action to ensure the company and others like it fulfil their legal responsibility to be transparent and open with shareholders like ACCR.

Companies have an obligation to be upfront and honest with investors – this is particularly important to investors who are trying to assess which companies will survive and thrive in a rapidly changing global energy economy.

Misleading information can have a dramatic effect on the market, on investors, and ultimately on the environment.

It can leave investors vulnerable to major losses. It can skew the market unfairly in favour of companies failing to adequately respond to the climate change, and unfairly away from companies that are acting responsibly.

In doing so, misleading information about natural gas and the transition towards a lower carbon economy can obstruct an effective and timely response to the climate crisis.

A genuine transition to a low-carbon energy economy is crucial if Australia is serious about meeting its commitments under the Paris Agreement and ensuring the world avoids the worst impacts of climate change.

It’s essential that energy companies play their part and are upfront and honest about their role in this crisis and the challenges they face in adapting to a low-carbon economy.

This landmark case will help to ensure energy companies like Santos are held to account for the statements they make to investors and the public in the face of the global challenge of climate change. 

IMAGE: Santos 2021 Sustainability Report

Santos Ltd is one of Australia’s largest gas companies and is reportedly the biggest domestic gas supplier in the country. This court case is challenging the veracity of a company’s net zero emissions target, the viability of carbon capture and storage, and the environmental impacts of blue hydrogen.

Santos is also a major player in coal seam gas, developing vast areas of the Surat and Bowen Basins in Queensland and planning a major new CSG project around the northern NSW agricultural hub of Narrabri.

The Motley Fool blog stated on 26 August 2021 that; The Santos Ltd (ASX: STO) share price slumped today after news broke that the company is facing a lawsuit. At market close, Santos shares are down 2.27% to $6.02. It is worth noting that this means the company’s share price is now at a new low for the 2021 calendar year.

End of trading on Friday 27 August 2021 its share price fell again to $5.57.

WATER IS LIFE: policy failures at Australian federal and state level just keep rolling on

 

The Guardian, 3 August 2021:

The Barwon-Darling is the main tributary for the Darling and was the focus of allegations in 2017 of water theft and users taking more than their allocations. Photograph: Mark Evans/Getty Images

New South Wales has been found to have exceeded its water allocations for 2019-20 in the Barwon-Darling catchment, one of the main cotton-growing areas of the state, raising new questions about the effectiveness of the state’s water enforcement rules.

The Barwon-Darling is the main tributary for the Darling and was the focus of the 2017 Four Corners report which raised allegations of water theft, pumps being tampered with and water users taking more than their allocations.

It led to a number of reports, prosecutions and an overhaul by NSW of its compliance regime.

But in the first year of compliance reporting, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority found NSW had exceeded what are known as the sustainable diversion limits (SDLs) in three areas – the Barwon-Darling watercourse, the Upper Macquarie alluvium and the Lower Murrumbidgee deep groundwater catchments.

The state claimed there was a “reasonable excuse” for exceeding the limits, and that it was adhering to its draft water resource plans for all three.

The MDBA accepted that as a reasonable and valid explanation for two of the areas, but not for the Barwon Darling.

“The MDBA found that NSW did not operate in a manner fully consistent with the submitted water resource plan in the 2019–20 water year for the Barwon–Darling,” the report said.

All other states were found to be compliant.

The NSW independent MP Justin Field said this was another black mark against the NSW Nationals on water management.

“Communities will be furious that water management has been non-compliant over a period which included the end of the worst drought on record and the first flush event. To have extractions exceeding limits over such a critical period raises serious questions about who benefited from the failures to properly implement water sharing rules.

“These findings make it all the more important that downstream targets to protect the environment and communities are included as part of any floodplain harvesting licensing regulations in the Northern Basin, including in the Barwon-Darling.”

Read the full article here.

On 5 August 2021 the Australian Government's Office of the Inspector-General of Water Compliance (IGWC) became operational. Responsibility for enforcing compliance with the Basin Plan now resides with the IGWC.

Image:IGWC

The IGWC is described as an independent regulator and its Interim Inspector-General of Water Compliance is former NSW Police officer & former NSW Nationals Member for Dubbo from 2011-2019, Troy Grant (left).

As NSW Police Minister Mr. Grant did not always obey the road rules and in his two year and one month stint as NSW Deputy Premier he failed to impress. Between April 2011 and  2019 Grant was a minister nine times over - with three tenues lasting less than six months.

In 2019 he did not re-contest his seat at the state election and in 2020 he resigned from the National Party of Australia.

His appointment as Interim Inspector-General was not universally approved when announced in 2020:

 “They’re not even pretending anymore,” Nature Conservation Council Chief Executive Chris Gambian said.

“Troy Grant was in charge when some of the worst policy decisions that favour big irrigators at the expense of communities, farmers and nature downstream.

“Fresh from stinging criticism from ICAC about water management in NSW, the federal government has appointed the fox to be in charge of the hen house.

"I despair when I see that the new campaign to push the Dunoon Dam shows no interest in values that we all claim to hold dear...."

 

Channon Gorge again under threat by the Dunoon Dam proposal?
IMAGE: David Lowe in Echo NetDaily, 17 December 2020

Echo NetDaily, Letter to the Editor, 5 May 2021.

Nan Nicholson, The Channon

I have been an environmental activist for over 50 years (I started when I was a 15 y/o schoolgirl in Melbourne). Some would call me ‘driven’.

Starting with Terania Creek, I have been involved in many campaigns to defend our rainforests, our old growth forests, and our beautiful rural landscapes from gas mining. Now I am fighting for the life of a rainforest that would be destroyed by a dam.

In all these cases I have been propelled by a powerful love of place, and of natural beauty. I think most Australians are familiar with this feeling, wherever they live. The first Australians certainly knew about it, with depths of connection that the rest of us can probably never understand. When the land is your religion, your history, your food source, your home, your responsibility, your future and your reason for being alive – then its preciousness can’t be described.

These two issues of heritage, natural and human, are central to the Dunoon dam debate. Heritage is something that is given to pass on intact, not to destroy in wilful ignorance.

So much of our heritage has been damaged in our region. Most of our original landscape has been transformed, and only a few original, or semi-original, remnants are left to tell us of what we have lost. Our Aboriginal heritage, now the heritage of all Australians, has been whittled away, over and over, while the traditional custodians are repeatedly ‘consulted’ then comprehensively ignored. How insulting is the Welcome to Country ritual when there is not a shred of willingness to act on their stated wishes?

I despair when I see that the new campaign to push the Dunoon Dam shows no interest in values that we all claim to hold dear – our love for our remarkable natural landscapes, forests, ecosystems and species that are found nowhere else on Earth, and our supposed respect for our First Nations peoples.

The natural places of our region have been maintained and preserved for thousands of years by people whose desire to protect them is now swept aside by uninformed claims that ‘the studies are incomplete’.

Detailed ecological and heritage assessments have already established why the Dunoon Dam site is extremely important, both to scientists and to our first people. Surely we can, just once, let the natural environment, and the people who have loved it the longest, prevail.

We know that extremes of drought are coming. Knowledge about droughts from the past can no longer be relied on. One big flood can fill the dam quickly, for sure, but five years of drought and low runoff would give us 253 ha of bare dirt with not a trace of the natural beauty and the millennia of human history that it destroyed with so little need.

The National Water Reform Draft Report has been released - now is the time for concerned Australians to speak up and loudly

If there is one thing that Australians know well by now, it is that state and federal governments frequently take from major reports only those points and recommendations which fit with their own political world view and/or those that can be easily distorted to meet the expectations of their party's financial backers - thus ensuring that little positive change occurs .

Water is the basis of life, without it communities perish and nations go into decline. That is one of the hard facts facing Australia as the impacts of climate change start to bite.

It is time for people to stand up in defence of this country's river and ground water systems and make sure governments understand that the environmental, economic and cultural vandalism they have supported in the past will no longer be tolerated in the present or the future. 

Australian Government, Productivity Commission:

National Water Reform Draft report 

This draft report was released on 11 February 2021. This draft report assesses the progress of the Australian, State and Territory governments towards achieving the objectives and outcomes of the National Water Initiative (NWI), and provides practical advice on future directions for national water reform. 

You are invited to examine the draft report and to make a written submission or brief comment by Wednesday 24 March 2021. 

 Make a submission or Make a brief comment 

The final report is expected to be handed to the Australian Government by the end of June 2021.

Download the draft report

• National Water Reform 2020 - Draft report (PDF - 2256 Kb)
• National Water Reform 2020 - Draft report (Word - 2897 Kb)

The Conversation, 11 February 2021:

Most Australians know all too well how precious water is. Sydney just experienced a severe drought, while towns across New South Wales and Queensland ran out of drinking water. Under climate change, the situation will become more dire, and more common. 

It wasn’t meant to be this way. In 2004, federal, state and territory governments signed up to the National Water Initiative. It was meant to secure Australia’s water supplies through better governance and plans for sustainable use across industry, environment and the community. 

But a report by the Productivity Commission released today says the policy must be updated. It found the National Water Initiative is not fit for the challenges of climate change, a growing population and our changing perceptions of how we value water. 

The report’s findings matter to all Australians, whether you live in a city or a drought-ravaged town. If governments don’t manage water better, on our behalf, then entire communities may disappear. Agriculture will suffer and nature will continue to degrade. It’s time for a change.

The report acknowledges progress in national water reform, and says Australia’s allocation of water resources has improved. But the commission makes clear there’s still much to be done, including: 

• making water infrastructure projects a critical part of the National Water Initiative 

• explicitly recognising how climate change threatens water-sharing agreement between states, users, towns, agriculture and the environment 

• more meaningful recognition of Indigenous rights to water delivering adequate drinking water quality to all Australians, including those in regional and remote communities, especially during drought 

• all states committing to drought management plans.

Read the full article here.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 February 2021:

A new national water reform report is inundated with positivity. But a closer look leaves you with a sinking feeling.

A glance at the draft report on national water reform from the Productivity Commission reminds me of the repeated judgment from old Mr Grace, the doddering owner of the department store in Are You Being Served? as he headed for the door: "You've all done very well!"

Its review of the progress of the National Water Initiative signed by the federal and state governments in 2004 - encompassing agreements on the Murray-Darling Basin - is terribly polite and relentlessly upbeat.

Apparently, governments have made "good progress" in having "largely achieved" their reform commitments. All that remains is just the need for a teensy-weensy bit of "policy renewal".

This mild-mannered stuff and congratulatory tone bear no resemblance to my memories of meetings of angry farmers railing against stupid greenies and other city slickers; of their insistence that the immediate needs of irrigators and irrigation towns along the river take priority over the river system's ultimate survival; of state governments' insistence on favouring their own irrigators over those in states further down the river; of federal and state National Party ministers happy to slip farmers a quiet favour, turning a blind eye to blatant infringements of the rules; of federal Labor ministers who, even with no seats to lose in the region, were unwilling to make themselves unpopular by standing up for the rivers' future.

I remember that the Howard government spent billions helping individual farmers make their irrigation systems more resistant to evaporation and seepage when all the benefits went to the farmer and none to the river system.

I remember all the infighting between government water agencies, and the mass fish kills during the recent drought in NSW and Queensland, for which the managers of the system accepted no responsibility.

Fortunately, reporters are adept at ignoring all the happy flannel up the front of government reports and finding the carefully hidden bad bits. And we have the assistance of water experts, including Professor Quentin Grafton, of the Australian National University, whose summary of the report in The Conversation is headed: "Our national water policy is outdated, unfair and not fit for climate challenges."

"If governments don't manage water better ... entire communities may disappear. Agriculture will suffer and nature will continue to degrade," he says.

The report's proposal to make "water infrastructure developments" a much larger part of the National Water Initiative is a critical way to keep governments honest. For years, state and federal governments have used taxpayers' dollars to pay for farming water infrastructure that largely benefits big corporate irrigators, Grafton says.

Last year the Morrison government announced a further $2 billion for its Building 21st Century Water Infrastructure project. Such megaprojects, he says, perpetuate the myth that Australia - the driest inhabited continent on Earth - can be "drought-proofed".

When governments signed the original initiative in 2004, they agreed to ensure investments in infrastructure would be both economically viable and ecologically sustainable. But many projects appear to be neither.

The report notes, for example, that building the Dungowan Dam in NSW means "any infrastructure that improves reliability for one user will affect water availability for others". The "prospect of 'new' water is illusory". Projects that aren't economically viable or ecologically sustainable can "burden taxpayers with ongoing costs, discourage efficient water use" and create long-lived impacts on communities and the environment", the report warns.

Equally disturbing is that billions of dollars for water infrastructure are presently targeted primarily at the agriculture and mining industries, while communities in desperate need of clean drinking water miss out, Grafton says.

Luckily, the report isn't so house trained as to avoid mentioning the gorilla the Morrison government prefers not to notice. There's a lot about the consequences of climate change. It says droughts will likely become more intense and frequent and, in many places, water will become scarce.

In Grafton's summary, the report says planning provisions were inadequate to deal with both the millennium drought and the recent drought in Eastern Australia. The 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan, for instance, took no account of climate change when determining how much water to take from waterways.

The present federal government actually dismantled the National Water Commission in 2015, so we no longer have a resourced, well-informed agency to "mark the homework" and make sure the reforms were being implemented as agreed, Grafton says.

In 2007, the worst year of the millennium drought - and the year John Howard feared he'd lose the election if he didn't match Labor's promise to introduce an emissions trading scheme - Howard remarked that "in a protracted drought, and with the prospect of long-term climate change, we need radical and permanent change".

Professor Grafton says we're still waiting for that change. "If Australia is to be prosperous and liveable into the future, governments must urgently implement water reform."

Locals to have their say regarding a key plan for the future management of the Tweed River

Echo NetDaily, 22 October 2019:

Tweed Shire Council is encouraging locals to have their say regarding a key plan for the future management of the Tweed River.

The Tweed River. Image suppled by Tweed Council

The Tweed River Estuary Management Plan provides recommendations for the future management of the waterway from 2020 to 2030.

More than 35 submissions have been received to date.

‘There are 90 separate actions within the plan that address identi ed threats to the Tweed River estuary,’ the council’s Waterways Program Leader Tom Alletson said.

‘Council is hoping people will take the time to read the plan or the summary, get a good understanding for what is proposed and share their thoughts with us.’

Some of the actions include plans to work with landholders to increase awareness of the impacts of both soil and river bank erosion, to work with the sugar industry and floodplain landholders to reduce acid sulfate soil runoff, and to assess the vulnerability of Council assets to increasing tidal inundation due to sea level rise.

The community is invited to make a submission on the Tweed Estuary Management Plan until 31 October.

For more information, to view the plan or to provide your feedback, visit the project page.

NSW irrigators still have their heads buried deep in the sand of dry river beds

Ahead of the NSW Local Government Annual Conference to be held from 14-16 October 2019 irrigators' demands are becoming evermore unrealistic in the face of growing surface water shortages due to drought and climate change.

And once again damming and diverting water from the Clarence River system is mentioned.

One has to wonder if the irrigators in the article below realise that, at the point where all the main river tributaries have contributed to the Clarence River flow, water height was only 0.89 metres or slightly less than 3 feet on 28 August 2019, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology which publishes recorded river heights for NSW Northern Rivers.

Water NSW graphs

Further upriver at Tabulum water height was recorded as only -0.04 metres.

The wide full river that these irrigators see on the Internet only runs from Grafton to the sea (approx. 52 kms as the crow flies) and all that way it is saline because the lower river is tidal and that additional undrinkable water volume comes from the ocean.

The Irrigator, Leeton NSW, 27 August 2019, p.5: 

Community leaders agreed to work together to "claw back" water from the NSW government at a Build More Dams meeting recently. 

The meeting attendees agreed to lobby the state government to return "voluntary contributions" of water, which have been siphoned from MIA irrigators since 2002. 

Irrigators had been giving up five per cent of their high security allocations and 15 per cent of their general security allocations, which translates to billions of dollars worth of water - and magnitudes more in today's water prices. Griffith City Council and Leeton Shire Council's mayors also agreed to support the lobbying efforts and urge other councils within the Murray Darling Association to join suit. 

Leeton's mayor Paul Maytom was present at the meeting. 

The committee also agreed to lobby the state government for a feasibility study into the Clarence River diversion scheme that was suggested by engineer David Coffey. 

The scheme would capture Clarence River water in dams and pump it into the Murray Darling system. 

The third and final motion agreed upon by the committee was to take an official stance and throw their support behind a royal commission into the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. 

The committee will be joining the ranks of the NSW Farmers Griffith branch, which has also recently thrown their support behind a royal commission.

Clarence Valley Council Living Sustainably Awards - nominations accepted until 5 August 2019

Clarence Valley Council, media release, July 19, 2019:

Rewards for those who live sustainably

THE call has gone out to nominate those who have made outstanding contributions to environmental sustainability in the Clarence Valley.

The Clarence Valley Council is calling for nominations for its annual Living Sustainably Awards and has categories for individuals, community groups, businesses, schools and ‘our backyard’.

The our backyard category is new and according to council environmental officer, Suzanne Lynch, has been introduced to applaud the commitment to backyard sustainability that many residents make.

“We would love to get applications from everyday people who are shrinking their carbon footprint and making a difference in their own backyards or their streets,” she said.

“This award is open to individual families or groups of residents in a street who have gone the extra mile by growing and sharing food, using renewable energy, incorporating energy efficiency and sustainable building practices, being committed recyclers, growing sustainable gardens or other great sustainable initiatives.”

The winner of the 2018 community group section was the South Grafton-based Mend and Make Do Crew and its spokeswoman, Ursula Tunks, said that for many people recycling was a way of surviving.

“The huge issue is there's more than enough to go around on this planet and there's absolutely no reason anyone should be going without,” she said.

“For us it's literally redistributing the wealth via what people throw out/donate. The environment is vital to all humans and not wasting anything is an important part of minimising the impact on all the environment.

“The award was an amazing opportunity for our team to get encouragement and acknowledgement that the work we do is valued outside our existing client agency base.”

For further information and to download a nomination form, visit http://bit.ly/2XKeACGsustainable Nominations close August 5.

Release ends.

The national scandal that is the Murray-Darling Basin continues unabated

On the morning of Friday 12 July 2019 NSW Water's real-time records showed that much of the Murray-Darling Basin river systems where they pass through New South Wales are still recording less than 20 per cent water flows, with some sections of the Darling River still regularly recording zero flows and water levels as low as 0.16 of a metre.  

Water sustainability and environmental water flows have been in crisis for decades within the Basin and no solution is in sight.

Here is a snapshot of the latest information........

ABC News, 7 July 2019:

Australian taxpayers have given a huge corporation more than $40 million, enabling it to expand irrigation in the Murray-Darling Basin under an environmental scheme that has been labelled a national disgrace.

Four Corners can reveal that more than $4 billion in Commonwealth funds has been handed over to irrigators, which has allowed them to expand their operations and use more water under the $5.6 billion water infrastructure scheme — the centrepiece of Australia's $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

The scheme is intended to recover water for the rivers by giving farmers money to build water-saving infrastructure, in return for some of their water rights.

Some of the beneficiaries of the scheme are partly foreign-owned corporations that have used the money to transform vast tracts of land along the threatened river system, planting thirsty cotton and nut fields.

One of the biggest operators is Webster Limited, a publicly traded company that produces 90 per cent of Australia's walnuts and is 19.5 per cent owned by Canadian pension fund PSP.

Webster has received $41 million from the water infrastructure scheme to grow its empire in the Murrumbidgee Valley, in south-west New South Wales, where it has bought hundreds of square kilometres of land.

The funding covers more than half of an ambitious $78 million capital works program by Webster Limited to build dams to store more than 30 billion extra litres of water and irrigate an extra 81 square kilometres of land, developing much of it into prime, irrigated cotton country.

Maryanne Slattery, a former director at the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, says it is horrifying that a scheme designed to help the environment is allowing irrigators to use more water.

"That program was supposed to reduce the amount of water that was going to irrigation, when it's actually increased the opportunities for irrigation … all subsidised by taxpayers," she said…...

Read full article here.

Note: It should come as no surprise that Chris Corrigan - who attempted to 'bust' a union and rob Patrick Steverdores workers of their jobs & wage entitlements via a version of the ‘bottom of the harbour’ scheme - is Chairman of Webster Limited. 

See PatrickStevedores v MUA [4 May 1998] HCA 

ABC Four Corners, 8 July 2019:

Taxpayer dollars, secretive deals and the lucrative business of water.

"It's a national scandal." Water economist

Two years on from the Four Corners investigation into water theft in the Murray-Darling Basin that sparked a royal commission, the program returns to the river system to investigate new concerns about how the plan to rescue it is being carried out.

"How extravagant is this scheme?... I'd just call it a rort." Lawyer

On Monday Four Corners investigates whether the contentious plan has become a colossal waste of taxpayers' money.

"The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is a triple bottom line fail. It's a fail for communities, it's a fail for the economy and it's absolutely a fail for the environment." Business owner

The river system is the lifeblood of Australian agriculture but right now it's in crisis. It's experiencing one of the worst droughts on record, and with mass fish deaths capturing the headlines and farmers struggling to survive, many are saying the scheme is failing to deliver.

"I would characterise it as pink batts for farmers, or pink batts for earth movers. It all had to happen in a short space of time." Contractor

Billions of taxpayers' dollars are being poured into grants handed to irrigators in an attempt to save more water. Four Corners investigates exactly how the money is being spent.

"I'm a taxpayer. I don't agree with the scheme. I think it's actually too expensive." Farmer

Some irrigators say this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform their businesses.

"With a bold initiative, having the basin plan and the government investing in irrigated agriculture, you get an opportunity to basically reset... for the next 50 years." Irrigation CEO

Others question who is actually gaining the most from the generous scheme.

"We're degrading the rivers at the same time as we're handing out money to a few individuals to realise huge economic gains at public cost." Ecologist

For those with access to water, there are lucrative sales to be made. Water prices have hit record highs turning it into liquid gold.

"Anyone can come in and buy water. You don't even have to be a farmer...You're going to make money out of it, and that's what a lot of people are doing, unfortunately." Farmer

Others worry that the scheme is encouraging the planting of crops even thirstier than cotton, creating a potential time bomb.

"There's been an explosion in the production of nuts in the Murrumbidgee, and more broadly in the Murray-Darling Basin...This may well be a time bomb." Former water official

Four Corners investigates how the scheme is being regulated and whether water users and the authorities responsible are being properly held to account.

"We're talking about billions of dollars in taxpayers' money on a scheme that many, many capable and reliable scientists have said, this isn't going to work." Lawyer

Transcript of Four Corners 8 July 2019 episode Cash Splash is here.

Abc.net.au, 9 July 2019:

Two years on from Pumped, the Four Corners investigation into water theft in the Murray-Darling Basin that sparked a royal commission, Monday night’s report Cash Splash investigated new concerns about how the plan to rescue the fragile and vitally important river system is being carried out, probing the infrastructure grants scheme which is now the centrepiece of the $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

The investigation revealed tens of millions of dollars intended to restore the Murray-Darling Basin is helping big businesses expand irrigation and access huge volumes of water that would have flowed into communities and habitats downstream.

The aim of the story was to speak with people who have first-hand evidence of how the grants scheme is operating. It drew on a wide cross-section of the community affected by the scheme, including farmers and irrigators who have received the funding or been involved in its expenditure, scientists and economists who have gathered and analysed data on its effects, community leaders, former government officials and current and former Murrumbidgee Irrigation staff.

The interviewees on the program were:

Julie and Glen Andreazza, NSW Farmers of the Year

Brett Jones, CEO, Murrumbidgee Irrigation

Anthony Kidman, former Murrumbidgee Irrigation Project Manager

David Papps, former Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder

Professor Richard Kingsford, Ecologist, UNSW

Richard Beasley SC, Former Senior Counsel Assisting the SA Royal Commission into the MDBP

Prof Sarah Wheeler, Water Economist, University of Adelaide

John Kerrigan, Earthmover and now irrigator and recipient of infrastructure grants

Maryanne Slattery, former Director of Environmental Water at the MDBA and now senior Water Researcher, Australia Institute

Kelvin and Glen Baxter, farmers

Prof Quentin Grafton, UNESCO Chair in Water Economics, ANU

Paul Pierotti, Vice President of the Griffith Business Chamber

Tony Onley, Business Development Coordinator, Murrumbidgee Irrigation

Emma Carmody, Senior Solicitor, Environmental Defender’s Office

Matthew Ireson, Grazier

Four Corners requested an interview with Environment Minister Sussan Ley, who is responsible for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office and is the Member for Farrer, which includes the Murrumbidgee Valley where the story was filmed.

Minister Ley declined to be interviewed and her spokesperson told Four Corners no-one from the government would comment for the story.